A Voice from the Nile, and Other Poems.

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A VOICE FROM THE NILE

AND OTHER. POEMS.

«att««tgne ^rew

DALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EUINBURCiH AND LONDON

DALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
KUINBURGK AND LONDON

James Thofnso.i.

A ■

VOICE FROM THE NILE

AND OTHER POEMS.

BY THE LATE

JAMES THOMSON
(" B. V.'»)

AUTHOR OF "the CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT," *'vANE's STORY," AND

"essays and phantasies."

WITH A MEMOIR OF THE A UTHOR

BY

BERTRAM DOBELL.

LONDON:
REEVES AND TURNER, 196 STRAND,

1S84.

CONTENTS.

o

LAST POEMS.

A Voice from the Nile ....

PAGE
I

Richard Forest's Midsummer Night .

lO

Insomnia

28

He Heard her Sing

41

The Poet and his Muse

55

The Sleeper .

62

Modern Penelope .

66

At Belvoir

70

A Stranger

75

Law v. Gospel .

81

The Old Story and the New Storey

86

Despotism tempered by Dyn

amite

. . 89

EARLY POEMS.

The Doom of a City
The Deliverer
A Festival of Life
Tasso to Leonora .
A Happy Poet

92
160
169
186
202

VI Contents,

PAGE

Suggested by Matthew Arnold's "Stanzas from

THE Grande Chartreuse'* 214

By the Sea 228

Prologue to the Pilgrimage to St. Nicotine . 233

Arch Archery 239

Low Life 243

The Dreamer 247

Robert Burns 250

WiLLLAM Blake 252

Song 253

A Chant 255

On a Broken Pipe 256

A Proem 257

Notes 259

JAMES THOMSON.

" You would have kept me from the Desert sands

Bestrewn with bleaching bones.
And led me through the friendly fertile lands,

And changed my weary moans
To hymns of triumph and enraptured love,
And made our earth as rich as Heaven above."

A Poem, a Drama, or a Novel, the perusal of which
has moved our admiration, or affected our feelings, can
hardly fail to make us desire to know something of its
creator. We feel that the powers developed by the author
must correspond with the faculties inherent in the man,
and that the man must be at least as interesting as his
work. It is not by insignificant or commonplace natures
that works of enduring merit can be produced. Only by
virtue of possessing unusual depth of feeling, intensity of
aspiration, or wealth of intellect, does an author produce
a masterpiece ; and his success is always in direct pro-
portion to the fineness and richness of his own person-
ality. Sometimes, indeed, the character of an author will
impart a factitious importance to his works. How dim
and shadowy a figure would Dr. Johnson now appear,
had his reputation depended solely upon his writings !

viii Memoir,

Our interest in the works of Burns, Byron, and Shelley
is surely doubled, at least, by the knowledge we possess
of the events of tl^eir lives. And if, in becoming
acquainted with their aspirations and their achievements,
their errors and their sins are also made known to us,
even so we have to consider that their faults were such
as belong to mankind in general, while their genius be-
longed to themselves alone. The faults of common men
die with them because the men themselves are forgotten,
whereas the sins of a Burns or a Byron are remembered
because he has himself immortalised them.

Mr. Thomson's works are excellent enough to stand
upon their own merits ; yet there is much in them that
may seem obscure to those who know nothing of his life.
His poems have this in common with those of Burns and
Byron, that their interest is intensely personal. Most of
them are reflections of his own individuality, and their
interest depends upon the skill with which he has ren-
dered his personal feelings interesting to the reader,
rather than to his having dramatically expressed the
thoughts and feelings of others. The key to his writings
is to be found in the events of his life, and it is this key
that I have endeavoured to supply in the following pages.

James Thomson was born at Port Glasgow, on the
23d of November, 1834. Both of his parents were
Scotch, and James was their first child. The father had
attained a good position in the merchant navy, and at
one time occupied the post of chief officer in a ship
trading to China. His mother was a zealous Irvingite,
and it seems probable that it was to her he owed his
deeply emotional and imaginative temperament. About

Memoir, ix

five years after the birth of James a second son was born,
and in little more than a year afterwards the mother died.
The father had by this time fallen somewhat in the social
scale, owing, it is said, to habits of intemperance. I
cannot give any other particulars respecting him, save a
somewhat vague report that he became imbecile and died
a few years afterwards. On the mother's death, the infant
child was taken charge of by relatives living at Port
Glasgow. Some friends of the father exerted themselves
in favour of James, and through their interest he was
admitted into that excellent institution, the Caledonian
Orphan Asylum. Here he proved himself a quick and
intelligent scholar, and his rapid progress in acquiring
knowledge gave the greatest satisfaction to his tutors.

When the time came for him to quit the Asylum, the
question arose of what was to be his future profession.
What he himself desired was to obtain a clerkship in a
bank or a city merchant's office. But no such place was
to be obtained except on condition of his serving for a
time without pay, and this he could not do, for he was
entirely without resources. He had, it is true, well-to-do
relatives in London, but they gave him no assistance.
No choice was left to him but to take the advice of some
of the masters at the Asylum, who advised him to qualify
for the post of a schoolmaster in the army. He did so,
although he much disliked the idea, and he was allowed
to join the service as assistant-schoolmaster. In this
capacity he was sent to Ireland, the garrison which he
joined being stationed at Ballincollig, near Cork. It
may be remarked here, that his position in the army,
however distasteful it may have been to him, was not an

Memoir.

altogether unenviable one. The usual routine of school
duty consists, I am told, in teaching the children for
three hours in the forenoon, an equal time being devoted
to the instruction of the adults in the afternoon. This
leaves a good deal of time free for study or recreation,
and there is plenty of evidence to show that Thomson
made the best use possible of his leisure hours at this
period.

During the time that he remained at the Asylum he
spent his holidays at the home of a kind and liberal
gentleman, an old friend of his father. From one of the
daughters of this gentleman much of the information
here embodied has been derived; and I will now quote
from her account of him a very interesting passage : —

"Being several years younger than James, I cannot
recollect much about him as a boy, but I remember we
always thought him wonderfully clever, very nice-looking,
and very gentle, grave and kind. He was always most
willing to attend to our whims, but my eldest sister was
his especial favourite. Her will seemed always law to
him. She was gay, as he was grave, but whatever Helen
said or did won appreciation from him. . . . Previous to
going (to Ireland) he earnestly requested that my sister
might be allowed to correspond with him, a request
which my parents thought it wiser to refuse. I was
allowed, however, to do so, and although his letters came
few and far between, I always welcomed and appreciated
them. He used to endeavour to guide my tastes, and
gave me good advice as to the books I should read,
sending me Charlotte Bronte's * Life and Letters,' Mrs.

Memoir. xi

Browning's 'Aurora Leigh,' some poems by Robert
Browning, and a few other books."

"Wonderfully clever, very nice-looking, and very
gentle, grave and kind " — such is the happy and expres-
sive phrase in which this lady sums up the impression
which James Thomson made upon her and her sister in
his youth. Nor was there any degree of partiality in
their judgment, which was only that which any one
coming in contact with him must have formed. Quick
in acquiring knowledge, he had a memory that retained
his acquirements firmly and tenaciously. Languages he
mastered easily and thoroughly ; and I am assured that
he might have won a foremost place as a mathematician,
had he persevered with his studies in that science. In
literature his taste was at once catholic and unerring :
he could relish Swift as well as Shelley, Fielding as well
as Mrs. Browning. He had his special literary favourites
of course, but I do not think he ever failed to recognise
the merits of a really great work, or ever valued a poor
or feeble one beyond its deserts. In short, it is hardly
possible to imagine a youth of more promise than his
was, and none who knew him then could have supposed
that he was doomed to a hopeless and joyless existence,
which was, in his own words, " a long defeat."

The army cannot be considered as a good school of
morals or manners ; and it is easy to conceive that the
coarse and prosaic life of the camp and the barrack-room
was very distasteful to the young student ; for he had in
full measure the fine sensibility and highly-strung nervous
organisation that usually accompany poetic gifts. But
it seems likely that what made his situation most irksome

xii Memoir.

was that he saw little prospect of escaping from it, and
of attaining a position more congenial to his disposition,
and offering mpie scope to the abilities which he felt
himself to possess. To be gifted with fine feelings and
to nurse great aspirations, yet to be compelled to labour
at uncongenial or repulsive tasks is a sufficiently un-
fortunate fate; and the victim of such circumstances
either sinks eventually to the level of his surroundings,
or suffers cruelly in the endeavour to escape from
them.

It was a noticeable trait in Thomson's character that
he hardly ever failed to make warm friends of those with
whom he came in familiar contact. He had not long
entered the army before he had won the devoted friend-
ship of Joseph Barnes, who was the Garrison-Master of
the station to which he was attached. This gentleman
was a self-educated man, who had attained his position
entirely by the force of his own abilities. In befriending
Thomson he was seconded by his wife, a most excellent
and kind-hearted woman. In some Sonnets, written in
1862, but not intended for publication, Thomson de-
lineates with an affectionate pen the characters of these
two friends of his youth. Mr. Barnes he describes
as —

"A man of genial heart and liberal mind,

A man most rich in that rare common-sense
Whose common absence in its name we find ;

A man of nature scorning all pretence,
And honest to the core, yet void of pride,

Whose vice upon that virtue most attends ;
A man of joyous humour unallied

With malice, never making foes but friends."

Memoir, xiii

Mrs. Barnes, whom he addresses as the "second
Mother of my orphaned youth," is thus delineated : —

" Thou patient heart to suflfer and endure,
Thou placid soul to mirror heavenly truth,

Thou gracious presence wheresoever you go
To gladden pleasure or to chasten strife.

Thou gentlest friend to sympathise with woe,
Thou perfect Mother and most perfect Wife."

In another Sonnet he says : —

" My dear dear friends, my heart yearns forth to you

In very many of its lonely hours ;
Nor sweetlier comes the balm of evening dew

To all-day-drooping in fierce sunlight flowers.
Than to this weary withered heart of mine

The tender memories, the moonlight dreams
Which make your home an ever-sacred shrine.

And show your features lit with heavenly gleams."

Another of these Sonnets is of such interest and
importance that I need make no apology for quoting it
in full : —

" Indeed you set me in a happy place.

Dear for itself, and dearer much for you,
And dearest still for one life-crowning grace —

Dearest, though infinitely saddest too :
For there my own Good Angel took my hand,

And filled my soul with glory of her eyes.
And led me through the love-lit Faerie Land

Which joins our common world to Paradise.
How soon, how soon, God called her from my side.

Back to her own celestial sphere of day !
And ever since she ceased to be my Guide,

I reel and stumble on life's solemn way ;
Ah, ever since her eyes withdrew their light,
I wander lost in blackest stormy night.**

This Sonnet sums up in brief the sad story of his life.

xiv Memoir,

It tells the tale of his first meeting with his "Good
Angel ; " of his intense and overmastering affection for
her ; of her untimely death, and of his life-long misery
and despair; Few words are needed to tell the story ;
but what a world of suffering is summed up in them !

This young girl was the daughter of the Armourer-
Sergeant of a regiment in the Garrison. That she was
a creature of uncommon loveliness, both of person and
of mind, seems to be certain. She was described by
Mrs. Barnes as resembling in character the Evangeline
St Clair of ** Uncle Tom's Cabin." I mention this
rather unwillingly, for I confess that my feeling with
regard to the authoress of that once popular novel is
anything but one of respect. Yet it must, be owned, I
think, that in delineating Eva St, Clair she has well
pourtrayed a character of peculiar charm and sweetness.
Twenty years ago it would probably have been difficult
to find a reader who was not well acquainted with
" Uncle Tom's Cabin ; '* but its popularity has so much
declined of late years, that it is likely enough that Eva
St Clair is a name only to the great majority of the
present generation. It seems worth while therefore to
quote a short passage from the novel, in which her
appearance and character are described : —

"Her form was the perfection of childish beauty,
without its usual chubbiness and squareness of outline.
There was about it an undulating and aerial grace, such
as one might dream of for some mythic and allegorical
being. Her face was remarkable, less for its perfect
beauty of feature, than for a singular and dreamy
earnestness of expression, which made the ideal start

Memoir. xv

when they looked at her, and by which the dullest and
most literal were impressed, without knowing why. The
shape of her head and the turn of her neck and bust
was peculiarly noble, and the long golden-brown hair,
that floated like a cloud around it, the deep spiritual
gravity of her violet-blue eyes, shaded by heavy fringes
of golden-brown, all marked her out from other children,
and made every one turn and look after her, as she
glided hither and thither. Nevertheless, the little one
was not what you would have called either a grave child
or a sad one. On the contrary, an airy and innocent
playfulness seemed to flicker like the shadow of summer
leaves over her childish face, and around her buoyant
figure. . . . Always dressed in white, she seemed to
move like a shadow through all sorts of places without
contracting spot or stain ; and there was not a corner or
nook where those fairy footsteps had not glided, and
that visionary golden head, with its deep blue eyes,
fleeted along."

It is to be observed that this is the portrait of quite a
young girl ; but it is obvious that a very slight degree of
alteration is needed to make it apply to one much older.
Moreover, the passage I have quoted agrees so well with
the various references in Mr. Thomson's writings to his
lost love, that I can hardly doubt that it is an essentially
true picture of her. We have in "Vane's Story" a
description of her which will well bear comparison with
the above extract : —

" For thought retraced the long sad years,
Of pallid smiles and frozen tears
Back to a certain festal night,
A whirl and blaze of swift delight,

XVI Memoir.

• When we together danced, we two !
I live it all again ! . . . Do you
Remember how I broke down quite
In the mere polka ? . . . Dressed in white,
A loose pink sash around your waist,
Low shoes across the instep laced,
Your moonwhite shoulders glancing through
Long yellow ringlets dancing too,
You were an Angel then ; as clean
From earthly dust-speck, as serene
And lovely and beyond my love.
As now in your far world above."

Thomson's devoted love was fully reciprocated by the
object of it Both of them were still very young; so
young indeed, that it would scarcely have been a wonder
if the rough soldiers amongst whom they lived, had been
inclined to ridicule their attachment. But they were
generally liked and respected : and all who knew them
felt a kindly interest in them, and wished them well.
Their dream of love and happiness was brief indeed in
duration, but it was perfect and unalloyed whilst it
lasted.

Amongst those with whom he became acquainted in the
army, the most notable was Charles Bradlaugh. Both
entered the service about the same time. They were, then
youths of sixteen and seventeen years, Bradlaugh being
the senior by about fourteen months. It was a strange
chance that brought these two, so unlike in nearly every
respect, together. Bradlaugh, the man of action and
enterprise, ever striving for practical ends, yet loving a
contest, whether physical or mental, as much for its own
sake as for any advantage it might bring him : of firm
and inflexible determination, who, when he has once

Memoir. xvii

resolved to attain an object, never rests until that object
is achieved. Thomson, the student, the idealist and
poet, or say the dreamer, who shrank with almost
morbid dislike from the noise and tumult of publicity,
and who, like Hamlet, was fitted rather for contempla-
tion than for action. What points of contact had they
to bring them together and unite them in the bonds of
friendship ? It is probable, indeed, that each liked and
respected the other for the very qualities which he him-
self lacked ; certain it is that they remained for many
years on terms of intimate friendship.

Bradlaugh, even at this early period of his life, had
made himself known as an advocate of extreme political
and theological views. Thomson had been pretty well
grounded in Presbyterian theology,^ and although his
views at this time may not have been strictly orthodox,
yet he still believed in Christianity. Many and animated
were the discussions that took place between them at this
period — discussions that left each of them (as is usually
the case) still of his own opinion. It would be a mistake
to suppose that Thomson's opinions were modified in
any way, owing to his intimacy with Bradlaugh. What-
ever views he adopted were the result of careful inquiry
and long meditation, and few persons were less likely to
be swayed by the opijiions of others. If he was any
man's disciple, he was the disciple of Shelley, in whom

^ He once gave me an amusing account of the sufferings he
underwent in committing to memory what is known as the As-
sembiys Shorter Catechism^ and of how he used to lie awake in
bed shivering at the thought that he would have to learn another,
longer and harder even than that.

b

xviii Memoir.

he recognised his poetical and personal ideal. He
studied his works with minute and loving care, and to
the last never ceased to speak of him in terms of admira-
tion and gratitude.^ It is very probable that the study
of Shelley's writings first led Thomson to doubt the truth
of the doctrines of Christianity ; but he would not have
accepted even Shelley's conclusions had they not tallied
with those which he arrived at by independent inquiry
and thought. A change of creed to a sensitive person
must ever be a painful process, and there is plenty of
evidence to prove that it was so in Thomson's case. But
one of his most marked characteristics was his complete
intellectual honesty. His convictions were slowly formed,
tenaciously held, and always expressed with vigour and
decision. He never modified or softened the expression
of his ideas from fear of Mrs. Grundy, or to conciliate
his readers. 2 Had he been less sincere or uncompromis-
ing his literary career would doubtless have been more
successful.

Thomson remained in the army as assistant school-
master for about two years, the regiment to which he was
attached being stationed in Ireland during the whole of
that time. At the end of this period he was (according
to the usual practice) sent to the Training College at

^ " Shelley ** was the title of one of his earliest poems. It was
written in 1 855. It contains some fine passages ; and I have omitted
it ft^om the present volume rather from want of space than from any
misgiving as to its excellence.

2 It is worth noting that one of his articles was found to be too
audacious even for the uncompromising National Reformer, After
two instalments of it had appeared, the third and concluding portion
was suppressed.

Memoir, xix

Chelsea to finish the course of studies necessary to qualify
him for the post of a schoolmaster. The usual practice
is for the students to remain there for two years, which
period is required in most cases in order to fit the candi-
dates for their duties. In his case, however, it was quite
unnecessary to keep him there for such a length of time :
indeed, he was quite able to pass the necessary examina-
. tions after he had been there only six months. Routine,
however, exacted a stay of at least eighteen months
before he was allowed to receive his appointment as
schoolmaster.

It was towards the close of his stay at the College that
he received the news of the death of his beloved. One
morning there came a letter stating that she was danger-
ously ill : the next morning came the news of her death.
Words cannot picture his grief and sorrow for her. For
three days after receiving the news of her death, no food
passed his lips, and it can hardly be doubted that he
intended to starve himself to death. Had he done so
the world would have lost much ; but he himself would
have lost nothing that he cared for, and would have
been spared long dreary years of suffering and despair.
Thenceforth Regret and Sorrow were his inseparable
companions, and without hope and almost without object,
his was rather a death-in-life than a healthy and natural
existence. In striking him thus through his affections,
destiny had wounded him where he was most vulnerable.
No other affliction could have affected him as he was
affected by this. In after-years he was doomed to endure
much poverty : he suffered constant rebuffs in his endea-
vours to get his works published; and finally neglect

/

I

I

XX Memoir,

and discouragement so far affected him, that for " seven
songless years *' his muse was almost or altogether silent.
These would have been grievous trials to most poets, and
perhaps to him also under other circumstances : but his
capacity for suffering was exhausted by his one great
grief, and all his other misfortunes were borne with stoical
indifference.

He left the Training College in 1854, when the.
Crimean War was about to begin. He was first sent to
serve with a militia regiment in Devonshire. Afterwards
he served at Aldershot, Dublin, Jersey, and other places.
As regards his conduct as a schoolmaster, it may be
remarked that his duties were always efficiently per-
formed j but, as he felt little interest in his profession,
he made no pretence of doing so, and in consequence,
perhaps, did not obtain so much credit as he really
deserved

It must not be thought that he yielded himself an
unresisting victim to the melancholy and despair that
had fastened themselves so firmly upon him. He read
extensively and studied deeply ; but it was the composi-
tion of poetry that best enabled him to forget for a time
his sorrows. He destroyed many of the poems written
in his early manhood ; but enough remain to attest the
industry with which he cultivated his poetical talents.
In the years 1854 to i860 he wrote many poems, some
of which are of considerable length. Perhaps the
most remarkable of these is " The Doom of a .City,"
which was written in 1857. Comparing this with "The
City of Dreadful Night," written fourteen or fifteen years
later, we find a great difference of tone and spirit, but

Memoir. xxi

nearly the same power of conception and execution.
Both are characterised by mastery of thought and lan-
guage, ease of versification, and command of various
metres. Both display the same power of picturesque
description : a power that invests the scenes and events
described with extraordinary vividness. A painter would
find in both many incidents inviting him to transfer them
to his canvas, and he might do so almost without intro-
ducing a single detail that he did not find described in
the poet's verses. In concentration of thought and
intensity of expression, " The City of Dreadful Night "
is as a whole superior to the earlier poem ; yet there are
some passages in " The Doom of a City " which equal
even in these points the later poem. As regards the
change that took place in the author's ideas in the
interval that elapsed between their composition, the
earlier poem supplies interesting evidence. The author
of "The Doom of a City" believes in an over-ruling
Providence, and in the Immortality of the Soul He
strives to reconcile the existence of evil with belief in a
benevolent Creator, and labours to show that mankind
are themselves responsible for the miseries they endure.
Yet it may be perceived even here that he held these
doctrines with no firm assurance, and that he was trying
to convince himself that he believed them, rather than
holding them with a complete conviction of their truth.

His first published poem was " The Fadeless Bower,"
which appeared in TatYs Edinburgh Magazine for July,
1858, with the signature of " Crepusculus." He continued
to contribute to the pages of that magazine until it was
discontinued in i86o. ** Bertram to the Lady Geraldine,"

xxii Memoir.

" Tasso to Leonora," " The Lord of the Castle of Indo-
lence," and " A Festival of Life " were among the poems
which he contributed to its pages. That at the time of
their publication they did not attract much, if any atten-
tion may perhaps be accounted, for by considering that
Tatf at that time had sunk very low both in circulation
and influence.

About the same time he contributed some prose essays
to the London Investigator^ a periodical edited by Charles
Bradlaugh. Amongst these were " Notes on Emerson "
and "A Few Words about Burns." Both articles are written
in a spirit of warm admiration and appreciation of the
great qualities of the subjects of them ; and I venture to
think that the Burns celebration which produced such
floods of prose and verse about him, brought forth
nothing superior to Thomson's essay as a vindication of
his life and genius.

We obtain an interesting glimpse of Thomson as he was
in i860 from the lady whose picture of him as a youth
I have already quoted. I give the account nearly ir^ her
own words, as I could hardly hope to improve upon her
artless and unaffected story. After stating that they had
had no personal intercourse with him for some years, she
proceeds thus : —

" At last he wrote saying that he was to have a fort-
night's holiday, and would pay us a visit. We were all
excitement at his coming. I had previously informed
him in one of my letters that Helen had become a
Ragged School teacher, and in reply he said he could
not imagine a creature so bright and in his remem-
brance so beautiful, being arrayed in sombre habili-

Memoir. xxiii

ments and acting such a character. When he arrived
Helen met him in the most demure manner possible,
and kept up the deception, or rather tried to do so, for
he was not to be deceived. Two days after his arrival,
when he was sitting reading, she suddenly sent something
flying at his head, at which he started up saying * Ah !
I have just been quietly waiting for this ! you have been
acting a part which does not become you, but you have
now resumed your true character, and are the Helen of
old.' During this visit we thought him much altered in
appearance and manners ; indeed, we were somewhat dis-
appointed. He was by no means so manly-looking as
when he left London, and was painfully silent and de-
pressed. He went from us with the intention of again
going to Aldershot, but from that day until Mr. Maccall ^
mentioned him to us, we never once heard of him. Ever
since we have felt greatly puzzled to account for his
singular conduct."

It is no wonder that these ladies, knowing nothing
of the story of his lost love, were puzzled to account for
his silence and depression. He was always singularly
reticent, in speech at least, about his private feelings,
and only to those who had known him long, and whose
friendship he had put to the proof, did he even hint at
the cause of his unhappiness. I say " cause " because
there cannot be a doubt that the death of his " only love "
was the root of his misery : yet along with this there was
another circumstance which contributed to his unhappi-

^ William Maccall, author of " Elements of Individualism," and
of many other remarkable, but unappreciated works.

xxiv Memoir.

ness. He had much in him, in fact, of the " self-tortur-
ing" spirit which afflicted Rousseau, and which drove
Cowper into insanity. These moods of self-dissatisfaction
he has well depicted in " Vane's Story," which is, in fact,
when rightly read, as candid and complete an autobio-
graphy as was ever written.

" I half remember, years ago,
fits of despair that maddened Woe,
Frantic remorse, intense self-scorn,
And yearnings harder to be borne
Of utter loneliness forlorn ;
What passionate secret prayers I prayed I
"What futile firm resolves I made !
As well a thorn might pray to be
Transformed into an olive-tree ;
As well a weevil might determine
To grow a farmer hating vermin ;
The /am that I am of God
Defines no less a worm or clod.
My penitence was honest guile ;
My inmost being all the while
Was laughing in a patient mood
Af this exteme solicitude,
Was waiting laughing till once mora
I should be sane as heretofore ;
And in the pauses of the fits,
That rent my heart and scared my wits,
Its pleasant mockery whispered through,
Oh^ what can Saadi have to do
With penitence ? and what can you t
Are Shiraz roses wreathed with rtie f "

It will be seen that the above extract not only depicts
the moods I have spoken of, but also records his final
deliverance from them. But he was afflicted by them
for a good many years, and they contributed to bring

>6

"^

Memoir. xxv

about the state of nervelessness and want of self-com-
mand into which he fell during the last three or four
years of his life.

The reader may perhaps ask whether there was not
some reason for these fits of self-scorn and remorse ? 1
answer that there was probably as much reason for them
in Thomson's case as there was in Cowper's. I'he good
man suffers more from remorse for the commission of
some microscopic offence, than the bad man who commits
some atrocious crime. Thomson saw this clearly in after-
years ; and he has well satirised the mood in which we
accuse ourselves of being desperate sinners (which yet
it is probable that no really good man is altogether a
stranger to) in the following epigram : —

**Once in a saintly passion

I cried with desperate grief,
O Lord, my heart is black with guile,

Of sinners I am chief.
Then stooped my guardian angel

And whispered from behind,
* Vanity, my little man,

You're nothing of the kind.* "

In 1 860 the National Reformer was established, and
Thomson became one of its contributors. His articles,
however, only appeared at rather long intervals in the
early volumes of that paper. His first important contri-
bution to its pages was an essay on "Shelley." It is a
most eloquent tribute to the genius and essential great-
ness of the "poet of poets."

Early in 1861 appeared a poem entitled "The Dead
Year." It reviews in an interesting and forcible manner
the chief events of the year i860. The two stanzas

xxvi Memoir,

descriptive of Mazzini and Garibaldi may be quoted as
fairly representative of the spirit of the poem : —

" She^ has two noble sons ; by these she is.

The Thinker ; who inspired from earliest youth,

In want and pain, in exile's miseries,
'Mid alien scorn, *mid foes that knew not ruth,
Has ever preached his spirit's inmost truth ;

Though friends waxed cold, or turned their love to hate.

Though even now his country is ingrate.

The Doer, whose high fame as purely shines
As his,* who heretofore Sicilia won

With victories flowing free as Homer's lines,
Sublime in action when the strife is on.
Sublime in pity when the strife is done ;

A pure and lofty spirit, blessed from sight

Of meaner natures' selfishness and spite."

In 1863 t^^ beautiful poem ** To our Ladies of Death "
appeared in the National Reformer^ and after that date
his contributions to it, both in prose and verse, became
more frequent. It is unnecessary to enumerate his
various writings in it ; but it may be stated that most of
the poems included in the two volumes already issued,
and a large proportion of the prose writings contained in
" Essays and Phantasies," first appeared in the Reformer,
It is hardly necessary to say that their appearance in
such a quarter scarcely tended to advance his reputation.
But in it he could publish without restraint his most
heterodox productions, and his writings, it must be
recollected, were often as heterodox from the Secularist
as from the Christian standpoint. I do not know of any

1 Italy.

* Timoleon's. See Plutarch's Lives; whence the simile in the
following line.

Memoir. • xxvii

other paper or magazine in which "Vane's Story," or
" The City of Dreadful Night " would have been allowed
to appear.

Thomson left the army in October, 1862. He had
long been weary of his position in it ; but the immediate
cause of his leaving was that an accusation of a breach
of military discipline was made against him. The story
is not worth telling at length : but it may be stated that
whether the accusation was true or false, it was one that
reflected no moral blame upon him whatever. On leav-
ing the army he applied to Mr. Bradlaugh, who was then
acting as managing clerk to a solicitor named Levison,
to know whether he could find employment for him.
Bradlaugh at once engaged him as a clerk in his office,
and also offered him a home with his own family.
Thomson accepted this offer, and for some years there-
after the most intimate relations existed between them.

I do not find anything specially worthy of record
during the next nine or ten years of Thomson's life,
although, in a literary point of view, these years were
perhaps his best and most productive period. In 1869
Mr. Froude accepted his poem called ** Sunday up the
River " for Frascr's Magazine^ of which he was then the
editor. Before inserting it, he asked Charles Kingsley's
opinion upon it, whose judgment was warmly in its
favour. This was almost the only instance (before the
publication of " The City of Dreadful Night " in 1880) in
which he was enabled to get one of his productions
published, apart from the Secular papers. It may be
worth mentioning that at one time he wrote two or
three articles for the Daily Telegraphy and he might

xxviii Memoir.

perhaps have been regularly engaged upon that paper ;
but leader-writing to order was by no means to his taste.

In 1872 he became secretary to a company which was
formed to work an American silver mine. In this
capacity he was sent out to America by the shareholders
to report upon the prospects of their speculation. There
he discovered that the shareholders had been deluded
into purchasing an utterly unsound concern, so that his
mission and his situation as secretary came to an end
together. His general verdict upon the Americans is
well expressed in the following extract from a letter to a
friend which he wrote while there : —

" I think we must forgive the Americans a good deal
of vulgarity and arrogance for soipe generations yet.
They are intoxicated with their vast country and its
vaster prospects. Besides, we of the old country have
sent them for years past, and are still sending them, our
half-starved and ignorant millions. The Americans of
the War of Independence were really a British race, and
related to the old country as a Greek colony to its
mother city or state. But the Americans of to-day are
only a nation in that they instinctively adore their union.
All the heterogeneous ingredients are seething in the
cauldron with plenty of scum and air bubbles atop. In
a century or two they may get stewed down into homo-
geneity — a really wholesome and dainty dish, not to be
set before a king though, I fancy. I resisted the im-
pression of the mere material vastitude as long as
possible, but found its influence growing on me week
by week : for it implies such vast possibilities of moral
and intellectual expansion. They are starting over here

Memoir. xxix

with all our experience and culture at their command,
without any of the obsolete burdens and impediments
which in the course of a thousand years have become
inseparable from our institutions, and with a country
which will want more labour and more people for many
generations to come.'*

Then comes a characteristic passage about himself : —

" I am quite well again. Though never perhaps very
strong, and rarely so well as to feel mere existence a
delight (as to a really healthy person it must be; no
inferior condition, in my opinion, deserves the name of
health), I am seldom ^hat we call unwell. When
travelling about I always find myself immensely better
than when confined to one place. With money, I
believe I should never have a home, but be always going
to and fro on the earth, and walking up and down in it,
like him of whom I am one of the children."

Soon after his return from America he was engaged by
the proprietors of the JVaa York World to go to Spain
as their Special Correspondent with the Carlists, who
were then (1873) in insurrection against the Republican
government Their cause was apparently prospering,
and it was supposed that they were about to make a bold
stroke and march upon Madrid. This however they did
not attempt, and though there was much marching and
counter-marching there was very little real fighting.
Thomson gave in the pages of the Secularist an enter-
taining account of his Spanish experiences. He remained
in Spain about two months, and whilst there was for a
time prostrated by a sun-stroke.

Shortly after his return to England, he became

XXX Memoir.

secretary to another company, which also collapsed after
a brief career. In 1874 he published in the National
Reformer his most remarkable work," The City of Dread-
ful Night." This poem was much more fortunate than its
predecessors, for it attracted a good deal of notice in
literary circles, and was very favourably spoken of in the
Academy, The Spectator devoted an article to it, which,
though censuring its tone, yet did some degree of justice
to the remarkable powers of the author. But what most
delighted Mr. Thomson was a few words of praise from
the author of "Adam Bede." For "George Eliot "he
always felt and expressed the deepest admiration, and her
praise probably gave him the greatest degree of pleasure
that he was capable of feeling. Here is an extract from
her letter : — " My mind responds with admiration to the
distinct vision and grand utterance in the poem which
you have been so good as to send me. Also I trust that
an intellect informed by so much passionate energy as
yours will soon give us more heroic strains with a wider
embrace of human fellowship in them — such as will be
to the labourers of the world what the odes of Tyrteus
were to the Spartans, thrilling them with the sublimity of
the social order, and the -courage of resistance to all that
would dissolve it."

Mr. W. M. Rossetti (to whose edition of Shelley's
Poetical Works Thomson had contributed some notes)
also expressed his great admiration for the poem, and
thenceforth remained on very friendly terms with the
author. Philip Bourke Marston, the unfortunate Oliver
Madox Browne, and Miss Blind may also be mentioned

Memoir, xxxi

as persons who felt and expressed high admiration for
*'The City of Dreadful Night."

Apologising for whatever may seem egotistical in the
narrative, I shall now proceed to give some account of my
own acquaintance with Mr. Thomson. When 1 read on
its first appearance in the National Reformer the poem
" To our Ladies of Death " I became convinced that it
must be the work of a genuine poet. I read it again
and again, my admiration increasing with each perusal.
Thenceforth I looked eagerly in each issue of the
Reformer for some new poem or essay from the pen of
" B. V.» ^

The impression upon my mind of the great powers of
this unknown writer deepened with time, and my won-
derment was great that an author of such genius should
confine it to the pages of the Reformer,

" The City of Dreadful Night " when first published
ran through four or five numbers of the National Re-
former, It was, however, crowded out of the paper one
week, and held over to the next number. Thereupon I
wrote to the editor to express my disappointment at its
non-appearance, taking occasion at the same time to

^ Bysshe Vanolis. " Bysshe " was chosen because of Thomson's
reverence for Shelley, and " Vanolis " as an anagram of Novalis, the
assumed name of the German mystic and poet, Friedrich von Har-
denberg. It will be remembered that the life and character of the
latter were largely affected by the untimely death of a young girl
to whom he was deeply attached. Hardenberg, however, was not
so inconsolable as Thomson, for he formed another attachment in
no long time after his first love's death. A much closer parallel to
Thomson's storywas that ofanother German poet, Ernst Schultze; but
of him Thomson knew nothing until a few months before his death.

xxxii Memoir.

avow my admiration of it, and of Mr. Thomson's writings
generally. The editor handed my note to Mr. Thomson,
who thereupon wrote me the following letter : —

" Dear Sir, — ^I have just received from Mr. Bradlaugli
your note about myself, and hasten to thank you heartil}'
for your very generous expressions of approval of my
writings. While I have neither tried nor cared to win
any popular applause, the occasional approbation of an
intelligent and sympathetic reader cheers me on a some-
what lonely path.

"You must not blame Mr. Bradlaugh for the delay in
continuing my current contribution to his paper. ... As
an Editor he must try to suit his public, and the great
majority of these care nothing for most of what I write.
As for this * City of Dreadful Night,' it is so alien from
common thought and feeling, that I knew well (as stated
in the Proem) that scarcely any readers would care for
it ; and Mr. B. tells me that he has received three or four
letters energetically protesting against its publication in
the N, jR,y yours I think being the only one praising it.
Moreover, one must not forget that there is probably no
other periodical in the kingdom which would accept such
writings, even were their literary merits far greater than
they are. . . .

^* While preferring to remain anonymous for the public,
I have no reason to hide my name from such corre-
spondents as yourself. — Yours truly,

"James Thomson (B. V.)"

In replying to this letter, I expressed a wish to become
personally acquainted with Mr. Thomson. He was

Memoir. xxxiii

pleased to accede to my request, and thenceforth we re-
mained on terms of friendship up to the time of his death.
" Why don't you bring out your poems in book form ? "
was naturally one of the first questions I put to him.
Thereupon he explained that he thought it very unlikely
that any publisher could be found who would risk
money in publishing them, and that he had no means
of paying for their publication himself, as most modern
poets have to do. This led me to make an offer of such
assistance as might be in my power to give him. At first
I intended to take the entire risk of their publication upon
myself, but my circumstances took rather an unfortunate
turn about that time, and I was compelled, very much to
my regret, to abandon the idea. Mr. Thomson then tried
various publishers, most of whom told him frankly that
there was no market for poetry, and that they could not
undertake to publish for him. This was fair enough, and
he had no ground for dissatisfaction with these gentle-
men : but it is not so easy to excuse a certain publisher,
who, after making a definite promise to publish, and
keeping him for some months in suspense, at last refused
to fulfil his engagement. Whilst I am upon this subject,
it will be well perhaps to relate the circumstances under
which the poems were eventually published. It happened
to occur to me in a fortunate moment that an application
to Messrs. Reeves & Turner on Mr. Thomson's behalf
might meet with success. I had already made an un-
successful trial in another quarter, the gentleman to whom
I proposed it valuing his respectability far too much to
run any risk of forfeiting it by publishing anything so

heterodox as " The City of Dreadful Night." Messrs,

c

xxxiv Memoir.

Reeves & Turner being liberal-minded men who had
already distinguished themselves by bringing out the hand-
somest and most complete edition of Shelley's Works,
were not alarmed even by Thomson's heterodoxy, and it
was promptly agreed upon that " The City of Dreadful
Night, and other Poems " should be issued at the joint
risk of those gentlemen and myself.

Returning to Thomson's connection with the National
Reformer and Mr. Bradlaugh, it has to be noted that in
1875 disagreements took place between the editor and his
most brilliant contributor, which led to the latter's secession
from that paper. I have already dwelt upon the utter
unlikeness of character of the two men ; and considering
this, it is by no means surprising that they eventually
disagreed ; the wonder is rather that they remained friends
for so long a time.

It was now necessary for Thomson to seek for other
employment; and he was fortunate enough to obtain
a literary engagement, which during the few years he was
yet to live was to prove his main dependence. Messrs.
Cope, the well-known tobacco-merchants of Liverpool,
published at this time a monthly periodical called Cop^s
Tobacco Plant I suppose their main object in issuing
it was to advertise their business ; but however this may
be, their periodical was of an unusually bright and enter-
taining character. It was conducted by Mr. John Fraser,
whose success in discovering unknown talent, and in
availing himself of it, made him a model editor. The
contributors were paid on a very liberal scale, and it is
probable that Thomson derived almost as much advan-

Memoir. xxxv

tage from his contributions to the Tobacco Plant as from
all his other literary labours put together.

To the Tobacco Plant Thomson contributed articles
on Ben Jonson, Rabelais, John Wilson, James Hogg,
and Walt Whitman ; also reviews of books, a series of
papers on Tobacco legislation, &c. He was, in short,
one of its most constant contributors from 1875 until
it was discontinued in 1881.

Shortly after Thomson's secession from the National
Reformer a new Freethought paper was started, entitled
the Secularist, To this periodical he now transferred
his services, and during the eighteen months that it lasted,
he was a constant contributor to its pages. His articles
in it were on the most various subjects, and any one who
now looks through a file of it, must become convinced
that his talents as a journalist were of a very high order,
though it may be regretted indeed that his powers were
so wasted One of his most important contributions to
the Secularist was a series of articles on Heinrich Heine,
who (after Shelley) was the author with whom Thomson
was most in sympathy, and whom he had most thoroughly
studied. His translations from him have gained general
praise ; and I think it may be truly said that no other
translator has so well rendered the spirit and music of
Heine into English. One of the projects which were
cut short by his untimely death was a book on Heine,
which he had undertaken to write.

I will now quote a few passages, which are of general
or personal interest, from his letters to me. The follow-
ing paragraph, which is from a letter dated June 20, 1874
refers to a poem by Mr. W. M. Rossetti : —

xxxvi Memoir.

" * Mrs. Holmes Gray * I want to read carefully before
returning. If he wrote that in 1849 when he must have
been very young, I can't understand how he came to
abandon poetry for criticism. It is quite mature in firm
grip of the subject, and has no youthful faults of redun-
dancy, rhetoric, exaggeration, ornament for ornament's
sake, affectation, and so forth."

In a letter dated June 24, 1874, after referring to the
notice in the Academy of the " City of Dreadful Night,"
he adds, " I have just written to the editor thanking him
and his critic, and saying that it seems to me a very
brave act on the part of a respectable English periodical,
to spontaneously call attention to an atheistical writing
(less remote than, say, Lucretius), treating it simply and
fairly on its literary merits, without obloquy or protesting
cant."

I quote the following passage from a letter dated
January 9, 1876, because it gives his answer to some
censures that have been passed upon his use of certain
words in his poems : —

** With regard to Mr. Bullen's criticisms on *Our Ladies
of Death,' — criticisms which really flatter me, as any
man's work is really praised by such examination, — I
must hold myself right. The only English Dictionary I
have by me is a school one, but as such little likely to
venture on neologisms ; moreover, it is very good of its
kind, being Reid's of -Edinburgh. This gives Sombre,
Sombrous, dark, gloomy ; Tenebrous, Tenebrious, dark,
gloomy, obscure (and, of course, Tenebrious implies
Tenebriously) ; Ruth, pity, sorrow; Ruthful, merciful,
sorrowful ; Ruthfully, sadly, sorrowfully. The huge

Memoir. xxxvii

Worcester Webster, into which I looked a day or two
after your letter came, agrees as to tenebrious and ruth ;
I forgot to look in it for sombrous. But as to ruth, I
used it in the common sense of pity, not that of sadness
and sorrow. When I wrote —

* My life but bdld
In jest and laugh to parry hateful ruth,*

I meant to parry the pity of others, not to parry my own
sadness, which, indeed, jest and laugh must intensify
instead of parrying. My thought was much like that of
Beatrice, * The Cenci,' Act v., Sc 3 : —

* Shall the light multitude
Fling at their choice curses orfcuiedpity.
Sad funeral flowers to deck a living corpse
Upon us as we pass, to pass away ? '

And from the light indifferent multitude, as you must
know, curses are even less unwelcome than pity when
we are profoundly suffering. I looked into the Diction-
aries not knowing whether their authority would sustain
or condemn me, as I am used to trust in careful writing
to my own sense of what is right ; this, naturally, having
been modified and formed by reading of good authors.
Even had the Dictionaries condemned me, I should in
these cases have been apt to assert my own correctness ;
in many others I should be ready to yield without con-
test. In the * City of Dreadful Night ' I used tenebrous
instead of tenebrious; just as good writers use, as it
happens to suit them, either funeral or funereal, sul-
phurous or sulphureous (Shelley often in * Hellas '), &c.
You will think that I have troubled you with many
words on a very little matter. ... As it is now just

xxxviii Memoir.

eleven p.m., and I have much to do to-morrow, I will
conclude in pity for myself if not in ruth for you."

The next extract is from a letter dated November i,
1878 :—

" I am very sorry but scarcely surprised that things
are not very flourishing with you just now. You are
correct in supposing that it is ditto with me. With the
natural depression of trade infinitely aggravated during
the past two years by the wretched impolicy of our Jewish-
Jingo misgovernment, it cannot be well with anybody but
arm-manufacturers, exchange speculators, and Hebrew
adventurers; and things seen likely to grow much
worse before they get better. . . . The 'Improvisations'^
I shall be delighted to see. It is so scarce that I have
never yet been able to come across it, and have never
seen any mention of it save that by Rossetti in his supple-
mentary chapter (a very fine one) to the *Life of Blake.'
It is not even in the British Museum, having been
printed for private circulation only, if I remember aright.
I should think it would be a real treasure to any of
Wilkinson's few admirers ; for, as you know, the fewer
the devotees of any man or thing, the more enthusiastic."

The following is from a letter dated December 23,
1878 :—

" Many thanks for the * Improvisations.' ... A brief
glance at it, and perusal of the remarkable note at the

^ ** Improvisations from the Spirit," by Dr. Garth Wilkinson.
Mr. Thomson was a warm admirer of Dr. Wilkinson's writings, and
under the title of "A Strange Book," he published a series of
articles on the " Improvisations " in the pages of the Liberal^ a
monthly magazine.

Memoir, xxxix

end, make me anticipate its study with unusual in-
terest . . . Just lately, and in these days I am pretty
busy for Fraser ; and well for me that it is so, for I have
not earned a penny save from him the whole year.
There is more work to do on the Tobacco Duties ; and
also verse and prose for the Christmas Card, but not so
much as last year, nor offering such genial opportunities
and associations as Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims.^
The subject this time is the Pursuit of Diva Nicotina,
in imitation of Sir Noel Paton's Pursuit of Pleasure.
Paton is a good painter and poet too, but of the ascetic-
pietistic school, or with strong leanings to it."

The next quotation is from a letter dated October 19,
1879:—

"I can still but barely manage to keep head above
water — sometimes sinking under for a bit You see
what I do for Cope. I have not succeeded in getting
any other work except on the Liberal^ and this is of
small value. ... I thank you for keeping the Whit-
man 2 for me : I sold it with other books when hard up.
In the meantime I have the latest 2 vol. edition in hand
from Fraser, who has requested some articles on him
when Tobacco Legislation, &c., will allow. I mean to
begin him now in the evenings at home, as the Legisla-
tion can be done only in the Museum. He may occupy
such intervals in the paper as did the Wilson and Hogg,
both done by request : the * Richard Feverel ' was on my

^ This refers to two large coloured plates which were issued with
the Tobacco Plants for which Thomson wrote explanatory and
descriptive matter in verse and prose.

' Whitman*s " Leaves of Grass.'*

xl Memoir.

own suggestion, (ieorge Meredith, to whom I sent a
copy, wrote me a very flattering because very high-
minded letter. He has seen the *City ;' and though by
no means sanguine with such a public as ours, he thinks
it should float a volume. The admiration of so many
excellent literary judges really surprises me. . . . All
this about myself because I have nothing else to write
about, going nowhere and seeing no one."

July I, 1880, he writes : —

" Last Tuesday I spent with Meredith ; a real red-
letter day in all respects. He is one of those person-
alities who need fear no comparisons with their best
writings."

Here is a passage from a letter dated January 5,
1881 :—

"With Mr. Wright and Percy I went to George
Eliot's funeral It was wretched tramping through the
slush and then standing in the rain for about three-
quarters of an hour, with nothing to . see but dripping
umbrellas. I was disappointed by there being any
chapel service at all. At the grave old Dr. Sadler
mumbled something, of which only two or three words
could be distinguished by us only a couple of yards
-behind him."

During the last two years of his life Thomson was
iiequently at Leicester, where he had many good friends*
of whom Mr. J. W. Barrs was perhaps the most zealous.
Here he was comparatively happy, as the following
extract from a letter dated June 21, 1881, will show : —

" We are here four miles from Leicester, with railway
station a few minutes off, in a pleasant villa surrounded

. Memoir. xli

by shrubbery, lawn, meadow and kitchen garden. Host
and hostess (sister) are kindness itself, as are all other
Leicester friends. We lead the most healthy of lives,
save for strong temptations to over-feeding on excellent
fare, and host's evil and powerfully contagious habit of
sitting up till about two a.m. smoking and reading or
chatting. I now leave him to his own wicked devices
at midnight or as soon after as possible. Despite the
showery weather we have had good drives and walks
(country all green and well- wooded), jolly little picnics,
and lawn-tennis ad infinitum, (N,B, — Lawn-tennis even
more than lady's fine pen responsible for the uncouthness
of this scrawl.) In brief we have been so busy with
enjoyment, that this is the first note I have accomplished
(or begun) in the seventeen days. . . . F,S, — Grass and
ground too wet for lawn-tennis this morning, else this
scrawl might not have got scrawled."

It will most likely occur to the reader that there is
some degree of incongruity between the passage just
quoted, and the general tenor of the narrative. But in
truth the change was so great from his solitary existence
in London to the comfort and cheerfulness of his life
in Leicester, that it is no wonder if he became for a time
comparatively happy. In London he lodged in one
narrow room, which was bed-room and sitting-room in
one, and where he could hardly help feeling a sense of
poverty and isolation. A morning spent at the British
Museum, an afternoon walk through the streets, and an
evening passed in reading or writing : such was the usual
course of his daily life in London. Visits to or from his
few London friends sometimes varied the monotony of

xlii Memoir.

his existence; and now and then he would go to a
concert or to the Italian Opera, for he was passionately
fond of music. In London, in short, it was almost im-
possible for him to forget his sorrows : in Leicester the
kind attentions of his friends, their cheerful pastimes and
lively conversation, only allowed him to remember them
at intervals.

I have already said that it was not Thomson's custom
to parade his sorrows in public ; but that he was, on the
contrary, uncommonly reserved about his private feelings.
It would never have occurred to a casual acquaintance
that he was one whose existence was a burden that he
could scarcely endure. When with friends he was an un-
usually pleasant companion. He conversed easily and
fluently on whatever subject might happen to be started,
and frequently gave utterance to a happy jest, or an epi-
grammatic phrase. There was not the slightest degree of
assumption in his manner, nor did he ever allude to his
own writings, except when he was invited to do so. But
his wounds were not the less painful, because he did not
exhibit them in public ; and of their deep and permanent
character, I had once a striking proof. We were talking
together lightly and cheerfully enough, when a casual re-
mark which I made chanced to recall the memory of his
lost love. Well do I remember the effect upon him :
how his voice changed, and how tears started to his
eyes!

I have already related the circumstances under which
his first volume of poems was ultimately published by
Messrs. Reeves & Turner. This was in April 1880,
and the book was on the whole favourably received by

Memoir, xliii

the press and the public. Perhaps the most generous
and unstinted recognition of the interest and importance
of the poems was in an article by Mr. G. A. Simcox in
the Fortnightly Review, Naturally enough the tone and
spirit of the "City of Dreadful Night" came in for a
good deal of adverse criticism, although the power and
excellence of the writing were generally acknowledged.
One acute critic, whose penetration is not usually so
much at fault, expressed an opinion that the intensely
gloomy character of the poem did not represent its
author's real feelings, but was merely assumed in accord-
ance with a prevailing poetical fashion. Thomson must
have smiled rather bitterly on reading this, for if ever
there was a work which expressed with entire sincerity its
author's mind and feelings, that work was "The City of
Dreadful Night.** It was the outcome of long years of
suffering and despair, of ceaseless yearnings, fruitless
regrets, and continual ponderings upon the mysteries
of human life. True or not to humanity at large — and
doubtless, to make it true universally, the dreadful gloom
would have to be lightened with many rays of sunlight —
it was at least a true expression of the author's thoughts
and experiences ; and it is to be feared that his case was
by no means singular, and that the inhabitants of ** The
City of Dreadful Night " are far more numerous than
comfortable and respectable optimism has any concep-
tion of. The poem must always remain unsurpassed as
a picture of the night-side of human nature : that there
is another side Thomson was well aware, and he is
perhaps as successful in depicting the bright as the
dark aspect of life.

xiiv Memoir.

The measure of success which attended the issue of
his two volumes of poems ^ naturally gave him much
pleasure: but it was too late for that or any change
in his circumstances to benefit him much. The same
degree of success, had it been obtained ten or twelve
years earlier, would doubtless have had the happiest
results. How unfortunate it was that appreciation of his
gifts came so late will be seen when it is considered that
for nearly or quite seven years (1875 to 1 881) he almost
entirely discontinued the writing of verse. How much
might have been accomplished in those years, if only he
had been encouraged by the sunshine of success ! But
his spirit was now in a great degree broken, his energies
were relaxed, and the tough constitution that had enabled
him to endure so long a pilgrimage of sorrow, was at last
breaking down. For these results I am bound to say
that his misfortunes were not alone responsible. That
he should become during these latter years a victim of
intemperance was hardly surprising, however much it was
to be deplored. His early loss, his poverty, his com-
parative failure as an author, the sense of isolation and
despair that possessed him, and which at night deprived
him even of sleep ; that he sought refuge from the con-
sciousness of such miseries as these in the temporary
forgetfulness derived from drink, could not be wondered
at Let the reader peruse the poems of " Mater Tene-
brarum" and "Insomnia," both of which depict with

^ "Vane's Story, and other Poems," was issued in October 1880.
"Essays and Phantasies," which was issued in 1881, had only a
qualified success. Only a few critics recognised the great excellence
of Thomson's matter and style in prose.

Memoir, xlv

absolute fidelity his night thoughts and experiences, and
he will have some idea of the causes which impelled him
with irresistible power to drown thought and remembrance
in the Lethe of alcohol. Yet it must not be thought that
he yielded unresistingly to its temptations. Against it he
would strive hard, and for a time perhaps successfully,
so that he would seem to have overcome his enemy : but
the spell would at last prove too powerful for him, and
he would remain enslaved by it for a season, until he
was left at last utterly exhausted and unnerved. To see
him when he was in this condition was a most painful
sight, and it used to afflict me in no ordinary degree. I
must be excused, however, from dwelling further upon
this painful subject : let it suffice to say, that he became
more and more a victim of intemperance, until it ulti-
mately hastened, if it did not cause his death.

Of the last few months of his life I need not say much.
The reader will see by the dates affixed to the poems in
the early part of this volume, that his poetic powers had
only been lying dormant, and that the vein of his genius
was by no means exhausted. The poems here printed
will, I think, bear comparison with the best of his earlier
productions, with the possible exception of "Weddah
and Om-el-Bonain." Even this masterpiece of narrative
poetry he might have equalled or surpassed if he had
lived, for he stated that he had conceived the story of
another poem which he thought would give full scope to
his powers. But this, like much else, was to remain un-
accomplished : he was taken ill on June i, 1882, and
being removed to University College Hospital, died
there on June 3. He was buried at Highgate cemetery,

xlvi Memoir.

in the same grave as his friend Austin Holyoake, on
June 8.

I borrow from Mr. Flaws' excellent essay on Thomson^
the following description of his personal appearance and
manner : —

" He looked like a veteran scarred in the fierce affrays
of life's war, and worn by the strain of its forced marches.
His close-knit form, short and sturdy, might have endured
any amount of mere roughings, if its owner had thought
it worth a care. It is rare to find so squarely massive a
head, combining mathematical power with high imagina-
tion in so marked a degree. Hence the grim logic of
fact that gives such weird force to all his poetry. You
could see the shadow that 'tremendous fate' had cast
over that naturally buoyant nature. It had eaten great
furrows into his broad brow, and cut tear-tracks down-
wards from his wistful eyes, so plaintive and brimful of
unspeakable tenderness as they opened wide when in
serious talk. And as he discussed the affairs of the day,
how the poet would merge in the keen-sighted trenchant
critic, whose- vocabulary was built up of the pure and racy
English of all the centuries, always striking yet never
pedantic ! "

One reflection will probably have suggested itself to the
reader of the foregoing sketch. Was not — he may perhaps
ask — the fact that Thomson allowed his whole existence to
be blighted by the death of a young girl, evidence of an
essentially weak or defective character ? To be endowed
— like Burns for instance — with passions and affections
of extraordinary force, is undoubtedly a misfortune, and

Published in the Secular Review,

Memoir. xlvii

the possessor of them, if he is capable of sometimes reach-
ing the highest heaven of enjoyment, must atone for this
by frequently descending into the deepest hell of despair :
but it would be absurd enough on the part of those whose
feelings are dull, and whose passions are torpid, if they
claimed, on those scores, to possess the more perfect tem-
perament. No doubt if Thomson had been ruled by
reason alone, he would have quickly forgotten his " only
love," and his life would have been happier, or, at least,
would have been something altogether different from what
it was. But in the lives of most men (and women too)
reason plays a very small part compared with the part
played by the feelings or affections. If we were ruled by
reason alone we should cease to regret a parent, a lover,
or a friend, the instant they were cold in death : but one
who could do so would scarcely be regarded as human at
all. As grief for the departed is natural to us, in what
way shall we set bounds to it ? Those whom we love or
respect but little, we do not long grieve for ; but what
length of time can assuage our grief for those whom we
have loved with the whole strength of our hearts ? Thom-
son, being a poet, was therefore a man of far more than
ordinary intensity of feeling. What Mr. Palgrave has
said of Shakespeare (in relation to the " Sonnets ") applies
equally well to Thomson : —

" * There is a weakness and folly in all excessive and
misplaced affection,' says Mr. Hallam. . . . Such ex-
cess, however, as it must appear in the light of common
day, is perhaps rarely wanting among the gifts of great
genius. The poet's nature differs in degree so much
from other men's, that we might almost speak of it as 9.

' xlviii Memoir.

difference in kind. This, in the sublime language of the
* Phaedrus,' is that * possession and ecstasy with which the
Muses seize on a plastic and pure soul, awakening it and
hurrying it forth like a Bacchanal in the ways of song.'
A sensitiveness unexperienced by lesser men exalts every
feeling to a range beyond ordinary sympathies. Friend-
ship blazes into passion. The furnace of love is seven
times heated. An imperious instinct demands that Beauty
and the adoration of Beauty shall, somehow, spite of
human faults and faithlessness, and the grave itself,
secure the * eternity promised by our ever-living poet.* "
No critical estimate of Mr. Thomson's place in
English literature can be attempted here: for I have
neither the right nor the ability to make such an
estimate. A poet should be judged by his peers : and I
have often felt no small degree of indignation when I
have read a review by some anonymous or obscure
scribbler, who, all unconscious of his own intellectual
deficiencies, has presumed to lecture Mr. Browning or
Mr. Swinburne in the style adopted by a pedagogue
towards a dull scholar. But I will not deny myself the
pleasure of quoting some words relating to Thomson
from the pen of the Rev. J. W. Ebsworth, a gentleman
whose knowledge of our old poetical literature is cer-
tainly unsurpassed, even if it is not unequalled : and
who, if he had not devoted himself to the labour of
bringing to light the works of others, must have made a
reputation as a poet for himself. He says : — " Of his
genius, true and strong, there can be no question what-
ever among competent judges. If we except Browning,
there is no poet living who can be considered as his

Memoir. xHx

superior. With his theological or anti-theological views
I had no quarrel ; I only regretted some few utterances
(chiefly in foot-notes) which might prove hindrances to
his being generally accepted. Such things did much
to retard the general recognition of Shelley's genius."

Looking back upon what I have written, I feel how
inadequately I have performed my task. I only at-
tempted it because of my earnest desire to see some degree
of justice done to the memory of one whom I admired
indeed as an author, but whom, in an even greater
degree, I loved as a man. The world is strangely blind
to its great men, and a Shelley, a Wordsworth, a Brown-
ing, or a George Meredith has to die, or at least to
labour unnoticed for many years, before the great British
public begins to discover that a splendid addition has
been made to its most glorious endowment. If I have
done a little to hasten the coming of the time when
Thomson's great gifts shall be appraised at their true
value, my labour has not been in vain, and I shall not
go unrewarded

I must not conclude without thanking most heartily
my friend Arthur H. BuUen, Esq., who has kindly looked
over the proofs of the present volume, and to whom I
am also indebted for some valuable suggestions. Nor
must I omit to mention Thomson's old friend, Mr. John
Grant, whom I have to thank for having furnished very
much of the information upon which I have founded the
present memoir.

LAST POEMS.

A VOICE FROM THE NILE.'

I COME from mountains under other stars

Than those reflected in my waters here ;

Athwart broad realms, beneath large skies, I flow,

Between the Libyan and Arabian hills,

And merge at last into the great Mid-Sea ;

And make this land of Egypt. All is mine :

The palm-trees and the doves among the palms.

The corn-fields and the flowers among the corn.

The patient oxen and the crocodiles.

The ibis and the heron and the hawk,

The lotus and the thick papyrus reeds.

The slant-sailed boats that flit before the wind

Or up my rapids ropes hale heavily ;

Yea, even all the massive temple-fronts

With all their columns and huge effigies,

The pyramids and Memnon and the Sphinx,

This Cairo and the City of the Greek

As Memphis and the hundred-gated Thebes,

^ Reprinted by permission from the Fortnightly Review,

A

A Voice from the Nile,

Sais and Denderah of Isis queen ;
Have grown because I fed them with full life,
And flourish only while I feed them still.
For if I stint my fertilising flood,
Gaunt famine reaps among the sons of men
Who have not corn to reap for all they sowed,
And blight and languishment are everywhere ;
And when I have withdrawn or turned aside
To other realms my ever-flowing streams,
The old realms withered from their old renown,
The sands came over them, the desert-sands
Incessantly encroaching, numberless
Beyond my water-drops, and buried them,
And all is silence, solitude, and death.
Exanimate silence while the waste winds howl
Over the sad immeasurable waste.

Dusk memories haunt me of an infinite past,
Ages and cycles brood above my springs,
Though I remember not my primal birth.
So ancient is my being and august,
I know not anything more venerable ;
Unless, perchance, the vaulting skies that hold
The sun and moon and stars that shine on me ;
The air that breathes upon me with delight ;
And Earth, All-Mother, all-beneficent.

A Voice from the Nile.

Who held her mountains forth like opulent breasts
To cradle me and feed me with their snows,
And hollowed oyt the great sea to receive
My overplus of flowing energy :
Blessfed for ever be our Mother Earth.

Only, the mountains that must feed my springs
Year after year and every year with snows
As they have fed innumerable years,
These mountains they are evermore the same.
Rooted and motionless ; the solemn heavens
Are evermore the same in stable rest ;
The sun and moon and stars that shine on me
Are evermore the same although they move :
I solely, moving ever without pause.
Am evermore the same and not the same ;
Pouring myself away into the sea.
And self-renewing from the farthest heights ;
Ever-fresh waters streaming down and down,
The one old Nilus constant through their change.

The creatures also whom I breed and feed
Perpetually perish and dissolve,
And other creatures like them take their place,
To perish in their turn and be no more :
My profluent waters perish not from life,

A Voice from the Nile.

Absorbed into the ever-living sea
Whose life is in their full replenishment.

Of all these creatures whom I breed and feed,
One only with his works is strange to me,
Is strange and admirable and pitiable.
As homeless where all others are at home.
My crocodiles are happy in my slime,
And bask and seize their prey, each for itself.
And leave their eggs to hatch in the hot sun,
And die, their lives fulfilled, and are no more,
And others bask and prey and leave their eggs.
My doves they build their nests, each pair its own^
And feed their callow young, each pair its own.
None serves another, each one serves itself;
All glean alike about my fields of grain.
And all the nests they build them are alike.
And are the self-same nests they built of old
Before the rearing of the pyramids.
Before great Hekatompylos was reared ;
Their cooing is the cooing soft and sweet
That murmured plaintively at evening-tide
In pillared Karnak as its pillars rose ;
And they are happy floating through my palms.

But Man, the admirable, the pitiable,
These sad-eyed peoples of the sons of men,

A Voice from the Nile, 5

Are as the children of an alien race

Planted among my children, not at home,

Changelings aloof from all my family.

The one is servant and the other lord.

And many myriads serve a single lord :

So was it when the pyramids were reared,

And sphinxes and huge columns and wrought stones

Were haled long lengthening leagues adown my banks

By hundreds groaning with the stress of toil

And groaning under the taskmaster's scourge,

With many falling foredone by the way,

Half-starved on lentils, onions, and scant bread ;

So is it now with these poor fellaheen

To whom my annual bounty brings fierce toil

With scarce enough of food to keep-in life.

They build mud huts and spacious palaces ;

And in the huts the moiling millions dwell.

And in the palaces their sumptuous lords

Pampered with all the choicest things I yield :

Most admirable, most pitiable Man.

Also their peoples ever are at war.
Slaying and slain, burning and ravaging,
And one yields to another and they pass.
While I flow evermore the same great Nile,
The ever-young and ever-ancient Nile :

A Voice from the Nile.

The swarthy is succeeded by the dusk,

The dusky by the pale, the pale again

By sunburned turbaned tribes long-linen-robed :

And with these changes all things change and pass,

All things but Me and this old Land of mine,

Their dwellings, habitudes and garbs, and tongues :

I hear strange voices;^ never more the voice

Austere priests chanted to the boat of death

Gliding across the Acherusian lake.

Or satraps parleyed in the Pharaoh's halls ;

Never the voice of mad Cambyses' hosts,

Never the voice of Alexander's Greece,

Never the voice of Caesar's haughty Rome :

And with the peoples and the languages.

With the great Empires still the great Creeds change ;

They shift, they change, they vanish like thin dreams,

As unsubstantial as the mists that rise

After my overflow from out my fields.

In silver fleeces, golden volumes, rise.

And melt away before the mounting sun ;

While I flow onward solely permanent

Amidst their swiftly-passing pageantry.

Poor men, most admirable, most pitiable.
With all their changes all their great Creeds change :

^ " and Nilus heareth strange voices.'* — Sir Thonias Browne,

A Voice from the Nile.

For Man, this alien in my family,

Is alien most in this, to cherish dreams

And brood on visions of eternity,

And build religions in his brooding brain

And in the dark depths awe-full of his soul

My other children live their little lives,

Are born and reach their prime and slowly fail.

And all their little lives are self-fulfilled ;

«

They die and are no more, content with age

And weary with infirmity. But Man

Has fear and hope and phantasy and awe.

And wistful yearnings and unsated loves,

That strain beyond the limits of his life,

And therefore Gods and Demons, Heaven and Hell :

This Man, the admirable, the pitiable.

Lo, I look backward some few thousand years,
And see men hewing temples in my rocks
With seated forms gigantic fronting them.
And solemn labyrinthine catacombs
With tombs all pictured with fair scenes of life
And scenes and symbols of mysterious death ;
And planting avenues of sphinxes forth,
Sphinxes couched calm, whose passionless regard
Sets timeless riddles to bewildered time.
Forth from my sacred banks to other fanes

8 A Voice from the Nile.

Islanded in the boundless sea of air,

Upon whose walls and colonnades are carved

Tremendous hieroglyphs of secret things ;

I see embalming of the bodies dead

And judging of the disembodied souls ;

I see the sacred animals alive,

And statues of the various-headed gods,

Amoiig themi throned a woman and a babe,

The goddess crescent-horned, the babe divine.

Then I flow forward some few thousand years.

And see new temples shining with all grace.

Whose sculptured gods are beautiful human forms.

Then I flow forward not a thousand years.

And see again a woman and a babe.

The woman haloed and the babe divine ;

And everywhere that symbol of the cross

I knew aforetime in the ancient days,

The emblem then of life, but now of death.

Then I flow forward some few hundred years.

And see again the crescent, now supreme

On lofty cupolas and minarets

Whence voices sweet and solemn call to prayer.

So the men change along my changeless stream,

And change their faiths ; but I yield all alike

Sweet water for their drinking, swe6t as wine.

And pure sweet water for their lustral rites :

A Voice from the Nile.

For thirty generations of my corn
Outlast a generation of my men,
And thirty generations of my men
Outlast a generation of their gods :
O admirable, pitiable Man,
My child yet alien in my family.

And I through all these generations flow "
Of corn and men and gods, all-bountiful.
Perennial through their transientness, still fed
By earth with waters in abundancy ;
And as I flowed here long before they were,
So may I flow when they no longer are,
Most like the serpent of eternity :
Blessed for ever be our Mother Earth.

November i 1 88 1.

( lo )

RICHARD FORESTS MIDSUMMER

NIGHT.

I.

The sun is setting in pale lucid gold,

From out that strange sweet green
The heavens through half their lucid breadth unfold,

Unfathomably serene.

•The moon is risen, formless, vague and wan,

Until the glory wane ;
Less moon as yet than thin white cloud, whereon

Young yearning eyes fix fain.

The splendour ripples on the broad calm bay

Where still some white sails gleam
Like sea-birds in the offing far away.

Suspended as in dream.

The wavelets whisper on the soft sands wide,

Soothing their thread of foam.
The silver fringe of the advancfng tide.

Nearer and nearer home.

Richard Forest's Midsummer Night. Ji

The hammers ringing on the building ships

Are ceasing from their chime ;
Our toils are closing in this sweet eclipse

Of tranquil vesper-time.

»

O day slow-dying in the golden west,

O far flushed clouds above,
O slowly rising moon, your infinite rest

Brings infinite longing love.

11.

But what come forth with the dark.

With the dusk of the eve and the night ?

When the lessening sails of that single barque
Shall be wholly lost to sight.

And the latest song of the latest lark
Shall be mute in the mute moonlight.

All the stars come forth on high

Like spirits that cast their shrouds,
And the solemn depths of the darkening sky

Are filled with their radiant crowds.
And Hesper, lovely as Love's own eye.

Shines beneath purple clouds ;

And the maidens and youths on earth,
On the shores of the sands and the piers,

12 Richard Forest ^s Midsummer Night,

Like a sudden bountiful beautiful birth,

In the flower of their happy years,
With babble and laughter and musical mirth

Under the silent spheres.

With the silent stars above,

And the maidens and youths below

With their murmurs sweeter than voice of the dove,
By the calm sea's plash and flow,

All the soft warm air breathes bliss and love
In the sunset's after-glow.

For the burning hours are past,

And the toils of the day are done,
And the peace of the night is come at last.

And the moon succeeds the sun ;
And the pulses of Heaven and Earth throb fast,

All the thousands throbbing as one.

HI.

Oh, a myriad stars may shine,

But ever the one sole Moon,
The Queen of the stars and the night divine,

The Queen most fair and boon,
For her mystical shine is Love's best wine,

And her midnight Love's own noon.

Richard Forest^ s Midsummer Night. 13

I have heard that the smallest star

Is a mucl\ more mighty sphere,
Than the regnant moon in her silver car

That we love and worship here ;
But behold, the star it is faint and far;

While our tnoon is bright and near.

Let the star in i|s distant skies

Burn glorious and great,
A sun of life to the far-off eyes

In the planets that swell its state ;
But it sways not the tides of our seas as it rides,

Nor the tides of our human fate.

So, there on the shining sand,

And there on the long curved pier,
Fair ladies circle fulgent and grand.

Each in her proper sphere ;
But the sun so far is a little star,

While my Love is near and dear :

Is near and dear and bright.

The Queen of my Heavens above.
The pure sweet light of my darkest night,

My Lotus, my Lily, my Dove ;
And my pulses flow and thrill and glow

In the sway of Her splendid love.

14 Richard Forest ^s Midsummer Night.

IV.

Farewell, fair margent of the sea,

Fair city of the noble bay ;
I seek my Love who looks for me,

Not far away, not far away,
Over the hill of wood and lea,

And near that other bay adown

The winding valley lone and lown.

The valley with its tethered kine.
The orchard plots and fields of grain.

So tranquil in the broad sunshine.

More tranquil now the high stars reign,

And tranquil most and most divine
When over it comes floating soon
The mystic splendour of the moon.

The cottage nestles sheltered well
Among rich apple-trees, embowered

In its side-nook of dimpled dell ;
Roses and jasmine starry-flowered

Clothe all its front ; the tide's long swell
Sounds up the valley slow and calm,
To ebb away a dying psalm.

Through clouds of delicate blossom white
The red tiles burn with steadfast glow.

Richard For est ^s Midsummer Night. 15

Or through green leaves and apples bright
And hoary stems a-slanting low,

When morning crowns the eastern height ;
The blue smoke quivering up the air
Its slender breath of household prayer ;

The sweet flowers flush and glow and yearn,

With wild bees humming in their bloom,
The lane comes winding like a burn

Through banks of golden gorse and broom,
And edged with grass and fringed with fern ;

The rapturous larks are singing high

In all the regions of the sky.

But that is day, these days of June

A-verging into hot July,
And this is night, more rich and boon,

Although its hours so swiftly fly :
O light of lovers, gracious moon,

My own Moon waits me full of love,

Brighter than all heaven's stars above.

V.

Ere the road curves up through the shade

With its transverse moonlight bars.
While above in the leafy gloom of the glade

Hang the glittering fruits of the stars ;

1 6 Richard Forest ^s Midsummer Night.

Let me pause for a moment and turn and look down

Beyond all the villa clumps duskily brown,

And beyond all the pale yellow lamps of the town ;

To the sea and the noble bay

Lulled asleep in the broad moonshine ;
To the shore where our youths and our maidens stray

On the sands and the pier's long line,
Like a swarm of bees that suspend their flight
To gather the honey of love and delight
In the heart of the azure-leaved Flower of the Night.

Like a swarm of buzzing bees

Whose busy murmurs float
On the wide-wafting wings of the southerly breeze.

Merged into one vague note :
They are drunk with the honey of love and of bliss.
And they throb with the stars of the azure abyss,
And the air is as soft as a tremulous kiss.

I shall find Her all alone

At the wicket of garden and lane.
Or out of the porch by the rose overgrown

She will glide all flushed and fain :
So gather your honey, you bees that swarm,
I drink-in my nectar all golden and warm
From a flower-cup the fairest in colour and form.

Richard For est *s Midsummer Night. 17

VI.

Do I love you more for your own grand sake,
Or more for the bliss you bring to me ?

You big black arms of the elms that make
The little white arms cling to me.

Do I love you more for your own sweet sake,
Or more for my heart's desire to me ?

You flowers of the night whose perfumes make
The sweetest breath suspire to me.

Do I love you more for your own dear sake,
Or more for the joys that rill through me ?

You nightingales whose voices make
The dearest soft voice thrill through me.

Do I love you more for your own bright sake,
Or more for the joys that stream on me ?

You stars of the heaven whose glances make
The brightest moist eyes beam on me.

Do I love you more for your own dear sake,
Or more for the bliss possessing me ?

You whispering waves of the sea that make
The dear lips mute caressing me.

Do I love you more for your own pure sake,
Or more for the Heavens you declare to me ?

B

1 8 Richard Forest's Midsummer Night.

You naked moon, whose splendours make
The soul of her pure love bare to me.

Oh, I love you all for your own love's sake,
And my love of my Love and her love to me,

Dear earth and sea and heavens that make
This life as the life above to me.

VII.

She is not there at the rustic gate,

Nor in the garden, nor in the porch :
Lucy ! the hour is not yet late.

The moon, our this night's signal torch.
The beacon-fire of our hearts' desire.
Over the wooded promontory
Shines on our bay in all her glory.

Good Father nods in his old arm-chair,

A-dozing over his evening pipe.
The old brown jug at his elbow there

Half-full of the old ale humming-ripe ;
For his work is done with the set o' the sun,
And he settles down content and placid,
Sweetness without one drop of acid.

And our little Mother upright sits.
Under her glasses glancing keen

Richard Forest ^s Midsummer Night, 19

And listening sharp as she knits and knits ;

Nothing unheard, nothing unseen ;
Ifer work is not done with the set o* the sun,

And she never nods and she never dozes

Until her head in the bed reposes.

Or else the dear old couple play

Some game they have played this thirty year ;
Cribbage, — and how she pegs away !

Perhaps Don Pedro when I appear.
And Lucy and I must join and try

Which shall prove the more prompt and able,
Or youth or eld at the old oak-table.

But Lucy, Lucy, where is She ? v

Not in the garden, not at the gate, ^

Not in the porch a-looking for me,
Not at the parlour-lattice in wait !
Can she sew or read and take no heed :;,

How the stars are bright and the moon is shining,
And I am without here longing and pining ?

O Lucy, Lucy ! can you dream

O'er the loves in a book with your own Love near ? —
Out from the back-shade darts a gleam ;

Lucy is here ! Lucy is here !
Dancing light in her eyes of a wicked surprise.

20 Richard Forest's Midsummer Night.

White rose in her hair, red rose in her fingers,
How she hastens ! — and how she lingers !

Oh, the smile of your mouth ! — but I want my own
kiss !
Oh, the flush of your face ! — but your head on my
- breast !
Oh, the rose in your yellow hair fragrant with bliss !

Oh, the rose in your hand by my own hand caressed !
O dear form I enlace in this perfect embrace.

My Love all a-tremble with passion and yearning.
While under my kisses the pure neck is burning !

VIIL
Oh, how the nights are short,

These heavenly nights of June !
The long day all amort
With toil, the time to court

So stinted in its boon !

In winter brief work-days,

Long rest-nights dark and cold.
Dank mists and miry ways.
Black boughs and leafless sprays,
No sweet birds singing bold.

I find this order strange.
And not at all the right ;

Richard Forest's Midsummer Night. 21

Not thus would I arrange :
May I propose a change
In seasons, day and night ?

Cold days, warm nights, be long.
Cold nights, warm days, be brief :

Warm nights of scent and song.

Nights long as love is strong, —
Oh, Love should have relief!

Yet some days we would spare.

Long days of love and rest.
So long, so rich, so rare.
When but to breathe the air

Is to be fully blest

When deep in fern we lie

With golden gorse above ;
Deep sapphire sea and sky.
Ringing of larks on high.

Our whole world breathing love.

Long days of perfect rest !

Long days of infinite bliss !
Your head upon my breast ;
Possessing and possessed,

Dissolving in a kiss.

22 Richard Forest's Midsummer Night,

IX.

Oh, how the nights are short,

These heavenly nights of June !
The long hot day amort
With toil, the time to court
So stinted in its boon 1

But three or four brief hours

Between the afterglow
And dawnlight ; while the flowers
Are dreaming in their bowers,
And birds their song forego ;

And in the noon of night,
As in the noon of day,
Flowers close on their delight,
Birds nestle from their flight,
Deep stillness holdeth sway :

Only the nightingales
Yet sing to moon and stars.

Although their full song fails ;

The corn-crake never quails,
But through the silence jars.

So few brief hours of peace ;
And only one for us.

Richard Forest^s Midsummer Night. 23

Alone, in toirs surcease,
To feed on love's increase :
It is too cruel thus !

Did little Mother chide

Because our sewing dropped
And we sat dreamy-eyed ?
Dear Mother, good betide,

The scolding must be stopped.

Dear Mother, good and true,

All-loving while you blame.
When spring brings skies of blue
And buds and flowers anew,

I come in with my claim !

I claim my Love, my Own,

Yet ever yours the while,
Under whose care hath grown
The sweetest blossom blown

In all our flower-loved isle.

The Spring renews its youth

And youth renews its Spring :
Love's wildest dreams are truth,
Magic is sober sooth ;

Charm of the Magic Ring !

24 Richard Forest's Midsummer Night.

X.

As we gaze and gaze on the sleeping sea
Beneath the moon's soft splendour,

The wide expanse inspires a trance
Most solemn and most tender.

The heavens all silent with their stars,
The sweet air hardly breathing,

The liquid light of ripples bright
Wreathing and interwreathing.

The tide self-poised now at the full.
Scarce swaying, almost soundless ;

The sea between twin skies serene,
Calm, fathomless and boundless.

What specks are we in this vast world.
Our little lives how fleeting !

While star on star is throbbing far,
What matter two hearts beating ?

How many many million years

Those living lights supernal
Shone ere our birth on this small earth !

Yet they are not eternal.

How many many million years.
When we have passed death's portal,

Richard Forest's Midsummer Night, 25

Those stars shall shine as now divine !
Yet they are not immortal.

Deep as may be the deepest sea,

Yet deeper is our love, dear ;
Our souls dilate with bliss as great

As all the heavens above, dear.

We float in dream until we seem

With all these worlds revolving ;
Our love intense, our bliss immense,

Throughout the whole dissolving.

A calm profound and infinite

Within us as without us ;
Our pulses beat in union sweet

With all the Life about us.

We are the whole World yet ourself

By some divine illusion ;
The I in Thee and Thou in Me

By mystic interfusion.

Our soul-tides poising at the full.

Scarce swaying, tranced in glory,
Have reached the clime of timeless time

Amid the transitory.

26 Richard Forest's Midsummer Night.

We have not spoken now so long,

But mute in still caressing,
Without one kiss have breathed the bliss

Too perfect for expressing.

XI.

Good night ; good night ! how truly hath been sung,
It is good night then only when the tongue

Need never say Good night ;
When hearts may beat together till the morrow
Dawns on long hours fulfilled of bliss not sorrow,

And eyes that close for darkness, frayed and stung
By the so less sweet light

Good night ; good night ! I leave you to sweet sleep
And lovely dreams of love divinely deep ;

May this be your good night :
My straining arms reluctantly surrender
Into the arms of sleep divinely tender

My Dearest thus, to safely surely keep
Until the morn shines bright.

Good night ; good night ! I leave you and go back
Into the silent city ; and, alack !

Can this be my good night ?
Yet Love, Bliss, Memory, radiant Hope are burning
In brain all throbbing and in heart all yearning.

Richard Forest's Midsummer Night. 27

As moon and stars in skies that else were black
With glorifying might.

Good night ; good night ! If parting when so brief
Is yet so bitter, what would be our grief

With Good-bye for Good night ! —
Farewell ! for weeks, for months, for years, for ever !
Alas for Lovers whom the Fates thus sever !

Where can they look for comfort or relief?
Oh, worse than mortal blight !

Good night ; good night ! for more than twenty hours I
The sleeping time of all the birds and flowers,

For whom it is good night ;
The waking time of all the sun's wide glory :
Ere yet the moon has crowned yon promontory

To-morrow evening, back to Eden's bowers
I come with swerveless flight

Good night ; good night ! my Life, my Love, my Bliss !
But one more last embrace, one more last kiss.

To sweeten sour Good night :
O dear Heavens, have her in your holy keeping !
O moon and stars, watch tenderly her sleeping !

O sun, thou regent of our World-abyss,
Awake her to delight !

December^ 1881.

( 38 )

INSOMNIA.

" Sleepless himself to give to others sleep.'*
" He giveth His beloved sleep."

I HEARD the sounding of the midnight hour ;

The others one by one had left the room,
In calm assurance that the gracious power

Of Sleep's fine alchemy would bless the gloom,
Transmuting all its leaden weight to gold,
To treasures of rich virtues manifold.

New strength, new health, new life ;
Just weary enough to nestle softly, sweetly,
Into divine unconsciousness, completely
Delivered from the world of toil and care and strife.

Just weary enough to feel assured of rest.
Of Sleep's divine oblivion and repose,

Renewing heart and brain for richer zest.
Of waking life when golden morning glows.

As young and pure and glad as if the first

That ever on the void of darkness burst
With ravishing warmth and light ;

On dewy grass and flowers and blithe birds singing,

Insomnia. 29

And shining waters, all enraptured springing,
Fragrance and shine and song, out of the womb of night.

But I with infinite weariness outworn.

Haggard with endless nights unblessed by sleep,

Ravaged by thoughts unutterably forlorn,
Plunged in despairs unfathomably deep.

Went cold and pale and trembling with affright

Into the desert vastitude of Night,
Arid and wild and black ;

Foreboding no oasis of sweet slumber,

Counting beforehand all the countless number
Of sands that are its minutes on my desolate track.

And so I went, the last, to my drear bed.

Aghast as one who should go down to lie
Among the blissfully unconscious dead,

Assured that as the endless years flowed by
Over the dreadful silence and deep gloom
And dense oppression of the stifling toinb,

He only of them all.
Nerveless and impotent to madness, never
Could hope oblivion's perfect trance for ever :
An agony of life eternal in death's pall.

But that would be for ever, without cure ! —
And yet the agony be not more great ;

30 Insomnia.

Supreme fatigue and pain, while they endure,

Into Eternity their time translate ;
Be it of hours and days or countless years,
And boundless aeons, it alike appears

To the crushed victim's soul ;
Utter despair foresees no termination,
But feels itself of infinite duration ;
The smallest fragment instant comprehends the whole.

The absolute of torture as of bliss

Is timeless, each transcending time and space ;
The one an infinite obscure abyss,

The other an eternal Heaven of grace. —
Keeping a little lamp of glimmering light
Companion through the horror of the night,

I laid me down aghast
As he of all who pass death's quiet portal
Malignantly reserved alone immortal.
In consciousness of bale that must for ever last

I laid me down and closed my heavy eyes.
As if sleep's mockery might win true sleep ;

And grew aware, with awe but not surprise.
Blindly aware through all the silence deep.

Of some dark Presence watching by my bed.

The awful image of a nameless dread ;

Insomnia. 31

But I lay still fordone ;
And felt its Shadow on me dark and solemn
And steadfast as a monumental column,
And thought drear thoughts of Doom, and heard the
bells chime One.

And then I raised my weary eyes and saw,

By some slant moonlight on the ceiling thrown
And faint lamp-gleam, that Image of my awe.

Still as a pillar of basaltic stone,
But all enveloped in a sombre shroud
Except the wan face drooping heavy-browed.

With sad eyes fixed on mine ;
Sad weary yearning eyes, but fixed remorseless
Upon my eyes yet wearier, that were forceless
To bear the cruel pressure ; cruel, unmalign.

Wherefore I asked for what I knew too well :
O ominous midnight Presence, What art Thou ?

Whereto in tones that sounded like a knell :
" I am the Second Hour, appointed now

To watch beside thy slumberless unrest."

Then I : Thus both, unlike, alike unblest ;
For I should sleep, you fly :

Are not those wings beneath thy mantle moulded ?

O Hour ! unfold those wings so straitly folded.
And urge thy natural flight beneath the moonlit sky.

3 a Insomnia.

" My wings shall open when your eyes shall close

In real slumber from this waking drear ;
Your wild unrest is my enforced repose ;

Ere I move hence you must not know me here."
Could not your wings fan slumber through my brain,
Soothing away its weariness and pain ?
" Your sleep must stir my wings :
Sleep, and I bear you gently on my pinions
Athwart my span of hollow night's dominions,
Whence hour on hour shall bear to morning's golden
springs."

That which I ask of you, you ask of me,
O weary Hour, thus standing sentinel
Against your nature, as I feel and see

Against my own your form immovable :
Could I bring Sleep to set you on the wing,
What other thing so gladly would I bring ?

Truly the Poet saith :
If that is best whose absence we deplore most,
Whose presence in our longings is the foremost.
What blessings equal Sleep save only love and death ?

I let my lids fall, sick of thought and sense.
But felt that Shadow heavy on my heart ;

And saw the night before me an immense

Black waste of ridge-walls, hour by hour apart.

Insomnia. 33

Dividing deep ravines : from ridge to ridge
Sleep's flying hour was an aerial bridge ;

But I, whose hours stood fast,
Must climb down painfully each steep side hither,
And climb more painfully each steep side thither,
And so make one hour's span for years of travail last.

Thus I went down into that first ravine,

Wearily, slowly, blindly, and alone.
Staggering, stumbling, sinking depths unseen,

Shaken and bruised and gashed by stub and
stone ;
And at the bottom paven with slipperiness,
A torrent-brook rushed headlong with such stress

Against my feeble limbs.
Such fury of wave and foam and icy bleakness
Buffeting insupportably my weakness
That when I would recall, dazed memory swirls and
swims.

How I got through I know not, faint as death ;

And then I had to climb the awful scarp.
Creeping with many a pause for panting breath.

Clinging to tangled root and rock-jut sharp ;
Perspiring with faint chills instead of heat.
Trembling, and bleeding hands and knees and feet ;

34 Insomnia.

Falling, to rise anew ;
Until, with lamentable toil and travel
Upon the ridge of arid sand and gravel
I lay supine half-dead and heard the bells chime Two ;

And knew a change of Watchers in the room,

Without a stir or sound beside mv bed :
Only the tingling silence of the gloom.

The muffled pulsing of the night's deep dread ;
And felt an image mightier to appal,
And looked ; the moonlight on the bed-foot wall

And corniced ceiling white
Was slanting now ; and in the midst stood solemn
And hopeless as a black sepulchral column
A steadfast shrouded Form, the Third Hour of the night.

The fixed regard implacably austere.

Yet none the less ineffably forlorn.
Something transcending all my former fear

Came jarring through my shattered frame outworn :
I knew that crushing rock could not be stirred ;
I had no heart to say a single word,

But closed my eyes again ;
And set me shuddering to the task stupendous
Of climbing down and up that gulph tremendous
Unto the next hour-ridge beyond Hope's farthest ken.

Insomnia, 35

Men sigh and plain and wail how life is brief :

Ah yes, our bright eternities of bliss
Are transient, rare, minute beyond belief,

Mere star-dust meteors in Time's night-abyss ;
Ah no, our black eternities intense
Of bale are lasting, dominant, immense.

As Time which is their breath ;
The memory of the bliss is yearning sorrow.
The memory of the bale clouds every morrow
Darkening through nights and days unto the night of
Death.

No human words could paint my travail sore

In the thick darkness of the next ravine.
Deeper immeasurably than that before ;

When hideous agonies, unheard, unseen.
In overwhelming floods of torture roll.
And horrors of great darkness drown the soul.

To be is not to be
In memory save as ghastliest impression.

And chaos of demoniacal possession

I shuddered on the ridge, and heard the bells chime
Three.

And like a pillar of essential gloom.
Most terrible in stature and regard.

36 Insomnia,

Black in the moonlight filling all the room

The Image of the Fourth Hour, evil-starred,
Stood over me ; but there was Something more,
Something behind It undiscerned before.

More dreadful than Its dread.
Which overshadowed it as with a fateful
Inexorable fascination hateful, —
A wan and formless Shade from regions of the dead.

I shut my eyes against that spectral Shade,

Which yet allured them with a deadly charm.
And that black Image of the Hour, dismayed

By such tremendous menacing of harm ;
And so into the gulph as into Hell ;
Where what immeasurable depths I fell.

With seizures of the heart
Whose each clutch seemed the end of all pulsation,
And tremors of exanimate prostration,
Are horrors in my soul that never can depart.

If I for hope or wish had any force.

It was that I might rush down sharply hurled

From rock to rock until a mangled corse
Down with the fury of the torrent whirled.

The fury of black waters and white foam.

To where the homeless find their only home,

Insomnia. 37

In the immense void Sea,
Whose isles are worlds, surrounding, unsurrounded,
Whose depths no mortal plummet ever sounded,
Beneath all surface storm calm in Eternity.

Such hope or wish was as a feeble spark, "
A little lamp's pale glimmer in a tomb,

To just reveal the hopeless deadly darkj

And wordless horrors of my soul's fixed doom :

Yet some mysterious instinct obstinate,

Blindly unconscious as a law of Fate,
Still urged me on and bore

My shattered being through the unfeared peril

Of death less hateful than the life as sterile :
I shuddered on the ridge, and heard the bells chime Four.

The Image of that Fifth Hour of the night
Was blacker in the moonlight now aslant

Upon its left than on its shrouded right ;
And over and behind It, dominant,

The Shadow not Its shadow cast its spell.

Most vague and dim and wan and terrible,
Death's ghastly aureole.

Pregnant with overpowering fascination.

Commanding by repulsive instigation.
Despair's envenomed anodyne to tempt the Soul.

38 Insomnia.

I closed my eyes, but could no longer keep
Under that Image and most awful Shade,
Supine in mockery of blissful sleep.

Delirious with such fierce thirst unallayed ;
Of all worst agonies the most unblest
Is passive agony of wild unrest :
Trembling and faint I rose,
And dressed with painful efforts, and descended
With furtive footsteps and with breath suspended,
And left the slumbering house with my unslumbering
woes.

Constrained to move through the unmoving hours,
Accurst from rest because the hours stood still ;

Feeling the hands of the Infernal Powers
Heavy upon me for enormous ill,

Inscrutable intolerable pain,

Against which mortal pleas and prayers are vain,
Gaspings of dying breath.

And human struggles, dying spasms yet vainer :

Renounce defence when Doom is the Arraigner ;
Let impotence of Life subside appeased in Death.

I paced the silent and deserted streets

In cold dark shade and chillier moonlight grey ;

Pondering a dolorous series of defeats

And black disasters from life's opening day.

Insomnia, 39

Invested with the shadow of a doom

That filled the Spring and Summer with a gloom

Most wintry bleak and drear ;
Gloom from within as from a sulphurous censer
Making the glooms without for ever denser,
To blight the buds and flowers and fruitage of my year.

Against a bridge's stony parapet

I leaned, and gazed into the waters black ;
And marked an angry morning red and wet

Beneath a livid and enormous rack
Glare out confronting the belated moon,
Huddled and wan and feeble as the swoon

Of featureless Despair :
When some stray workman, half-asleep but lusty.
Passed urgent through the rainpour wild and gusty,
I felt a ghost already, planted watching there.

As phantom to its grave, or to its den

Some wild beast of the night when night is sped,

I turned unto my homeless home again
To front a day only less charged with dread

Than that dread night ; and after day, to front

Another night of — what would be the brunt ?
I put the thought aside.

To be resumed when common life unfolded

40 Insomnia.

In common daylight had my brain remoulded ;
Meanwhile the flaws of rain refreshed and fortified.

The day passed, and the night ; and other days,
And other nights ; and all of evil doom ;

The sun-hours in a sick bewildering haze,
The star-hours in a thick enormous gloom,

With rending lightnings and with thunder-knells ;

The ghastly hours of all the timeless Hells : —
Bury them with their bane !

I look back on the words already written.

And writhe by cold rage stung, by self-scorn smitten,
They are so weak and vain and infinitely inane. . . .

" How from those hideous Malebolges deep

I ever could win back to upper earth,
Restored to human nights of blessed sleep

And healthy waking with the new day's birth ? " —
How do men climb back from a swoon whose stress.
Crushing far deeper than all consciousness,

Is deep as deep death seems ?
Who can the steps and stages mete and number
By which we re-emerge from nightly slumber ? —
Our poor vast petty life is one dark maze of dreams.

Marchf 1882.

( 41 )

HE HEARD HER SING.

We were now in the midmost Maytime, in the full green

flood of the Spring,
When the air is sweet all the daytime with the blossoms

and birds that sing ;
When the air is rich all the night, and richest of all in

its noon
When the nightingales pant the delight and keen stress

of their love to the moon ;
When the almond and apple and pear spread wavering

wavelets of snow
In the light of the soft warm air far- flushed with a deli-
cate glow ;
When the towering chestnuts uphold their masses of

spires red or white.
And the pendulous tresses of gold of the slim laburnum

burn bright.
And the lilac guardeth the bowers with the gleam of a

lifted spear,
And the scent of the hawthorn flowers breathes all the

new life of the year,

42 He Heard her Sing.

And the linden's tender pink bud by the green of the

leaf is o'errun,
And the bronze-beech shines like blood in the light of

the morning sun,
And the leaf-buds seem spangling some network of

gossamer flung on the elm,
And the hedges are filling their fretwork with every

sweet green of Spring's realm ;
And the flowers are everywhere budding and blowing

about our feet.
The green of the meadows star-studding and the bright

green blades of the wheat.

An evening and night of song. For first when I left

the town,
And took the lane that is long and came out on the

breeze-swept down,
The sunset heavens were all ringing wide over the golden

gorse
With the skylarks* rapturous singing, a revel of larks in

full force,
A revel of larks in the raptures surpassing all raptures of

Man,
Who ponders the blessings he captures and finds in each

blessing some ban.

He Heard her Sing. 43

And then I went on down the dale in the light of the

afterglow,
In that strange light green and pale and serene and

pathetic and slow
In its fading round to the north, while the light of the

unseen moon
From the east comes brightening forth an ever-increasing

boon.
And there in the cottage my Alice, through the hours so

short and so long,
Kept filled to the brim love's chalice with the wine of

music and song :
And first with colossal Beethoven, the gentlest spirit

sublime
Of the harmonies interwoven, Eternity woven with Time ;
Of the melodies slowly and slowly dissolving away through

the soul,
While it dissolves with them wholly and our being is

lost in the Whole ;
As gentle as Dante the Poet, for only the lulls of the stress
Of the mightiest spirits can know it, this ineffable gentle-
ness :
And then with the delicate tender phantastic dreamer of

night,
W^hose splendour is starlike splendour and his light a

mystic moonlight.

44 He Heard her Sing.

Nocturn on nocturn dreaming while the mind floats far

in the haze
And the dusk and the shadow and gleaming of a realm

that has no days :
And then she sang ballads olden, ballads of love and of

woe,
Love all burningly golden, grief with heart's-blood in its

flow;
Those ballads of Scotland that thrill you, keen from the

heart to the heart,
Till their pathos is seeming to kill you, with an exquisite

bliss in the smart.

And then we went out of the valley and over the spur

of the hill,
And down by a woodland alley where the sprinkled

moonlight lay still ;
For the breeze in the boughs was still and the breeze was

still in the sprays,
And the leaves had scarcely a thrill in the stream of the

silver rays.
But looked as if drawn on the sky or etched with a

graver keen,
Sharp shadows thrown from on high deep out of the

azure serene :

He Heard her Sing. 45

And a certain copse we knew, where never in Maytime

fails,
While the night distils sweet dew, the song of the night-
ingales :
And there together we heard the lyrical drama of love
Of the wonderful passionate bird which swelleth the

heart so above
All other thought of this life, all other care of this earth.
Be it of pleasure or strife, be it of sorrow or mirth,
Saving the one intense imperious passion supreme
Kindling the soul and the sense, making the world but

a dream,
The dream of an aching delight and a yearning afar and

afar.
While the music thrills all the void night to the loftiest

pulsating star : —
"Love, love only, for ever; love with its torture and

bliss ;
All the world's glories can never equal two souls in one

kiss."

And when I had bidden farewell to my Love at the

cottage door.
For a night and a day farewell, for a night and a day

and no more.

46 He Heard her Sing.

I went down to the shining strand of our own beloved

bay,
To the shore of soft white sand caressed by the pure

white spray, *
In the arms of the hills serene, clothed from the base to

the crest
With garments of manifold green, curving to east and to

west;
And high in the pale blue south where the clouds were

white as wool.

Over the little bay-mouth the moon shone near the
full;

And I walked by the waves' soft moan, for my heart was

beyond control.
And I needed to be alone with the night and my love

and my soul,
And I could not think of sleep in the moonlight broad

and clear.
For a music solemn and deep filled all my spirit^s sphere,
A music interwoven of all that night I had heard,
From the music of mighty Beethoven to the song of the

little brown bird.

And thus as I paced the shore beneath the azure abyss,
And my soul thrilled more and more with a yearning and
sadness of bliss.

He Heard her Sing, 47

A voice came over the water from over the eastern cape,
Like the voice of some ocean daughter wailing a lover's

escape, —
A voice so plaintive and distant, as faint as a wounded

dove,
Whose wings are scarcely resistant to the air beneath and

above.
Wavering, panting, urging from the farthest east to the

west.
Over some wild sea surging in the hope forlorn of its nest ;
A voice that quivered and trembled, with falls of a broken

heart.

And then like that dove reassembled its forces to play
out its part ;

Till it came to a fall that was dying, the end of an in-
finite grief,

A sobbing and throbbing and sighing that death was a
welcome relief :

And so there was silence once more, and the moonlight
looked sad as a pall.

And I stood entranced on the shore and marvelled what
next would befall.

x\nd thus all-expectant abiding I waited not long, for soon
A boat came gliding and gliding out in the light of the
moon,

48 He Heard her Sing.

Gliding with muffled oars, slowly, a thin dark line,
Round from the shadowing shores into the silver shine
Of the clear moon westering now, and still drew on and on.
While the water before its prow breaking and glistering

shone,
Slowly in silence strange ; and the rower rowed till it lay
Afloat within easy range deep in the curve of the bay :
And besides the rower were two ; a Woman, who sat in

the stern,
And Her by her fame I knew, one of those fames that

burn,
Startling and kindling the world, one whose likeness we

everywhere see ;
And a man reclining half-curled with an indolent grace

at her knee.
The Signor, lord of her choice ; and he lightly touched

a guitar ; —
A guitar for that glorious voice ! Illumine the sun with

a star !
She sat superb and erect, stately, all-happy, serene.
Her right hand toying unchecked with the hair of that

page of a Queen ;
With her head and her throat and her bust like the bust

and the throat and the head
Of Her who has long been dust, of her who shall never

be dead,

He Heard her Sing, 49

Preserved by the potent art made trebly potent by love,
While the transient ages depart from under the heavens

above, —
Preserved in the colour and line on the canvas fulgently

flung
By Him the Artist divine who triumphed and vanished

so young :
Surely there rarely hath been a lot more to be envied in

life
Than thy lot, O Fornarina, whom Raphael's heart

took to wife.

There was silence yet for a time save the tinkling capri-
cious and quaint,
Then She lifted* her voice sublime, no longer tender and

faint,
Pathetic and tremulous, no ! but firm as a column it rose,
Rising solemn and slow with a full rich swell to the close,
Firm as a marble column soaring with noble pride
In a triumph of rapture solemn to some Hero deified ;
In a rapture of exultation made calm by its stress intense.
In a triumph of consecration and a jubilation immense.
And the Voice flowed on and on, and ever it swelled as

it poured,
Till the stars that throbbed as they shone seemed
throbbing with it in accord ;

He Heard her Sing,

Till the moon herself in my dream, still Empress of all

the night,
Was only that voice supreme translated into pure light :
And I lost all sense of the earth though I still had sense

of the sea ;
And I saw the stupendous girth of a tree like the Norse

World-Tree ;
And its branches filled all the sky, and the deep sea

watered its root,
And the clouds were its leaves on high and the stars were

its silver fruit ;
Yet the stars were the notes of the singing and the moon

was the voice of the song.
Through the vault of the firmament ringing and swelling

resistlessly strong ;
And the whole vast night was a shell for that music of

manifold might,
And was strained by the stress of the swell of the music

yet vaster than night.
And I saw as a crystal fountain whose shaft was a column

of light
More high than the loftiest mountain ascend the abyss

of the night ;
And its spray filled all the sky, 'and the clouds were the

clouds of its spray.
Which glittered in star-points on high and filled with pure

silver the bay ;

He Heard her Sing, 51

And ever in rising and falling it sang as it rose and it fell,
And the heavens with their pure azure walling all pulsed

with the pulse of its swell,
For the stars were the notes of the singing and the moon

was the voice of the song
Through the vault of the firmament ringing and swelling

ineffably strong ;
And the whole vast night was a shell for that music of

manifold might,
And was strained by the stress of the swell of the music

yet vaster than night :
And the fountain in swelling and soaring and filling be-
neath and above,
Grew flushed with red fire in outpouring, transmuting

great power into love.
Great power with a greater love flushing, immense and

intense and supreme,
As if all the World's heart-blood outgushing ensanguined

the trance of my dream ;
And the waves of its blood seemed to dash on the shore

of the sky to the cope
With the stress of the fire of a passion and yearning of

limitless scope.
Vast fire of a passion and yearning, keen torture of rap-
ture intense,
A most unendurable burning consuming the soul with

the sense : —

5 2 He Heard her Sing.

" Love, love only, for ever ; love with its torture of bliss ;

All the world's glories can never equal two souls in one
kiss:

Love, and ever love wholly ; love in all time and all
space ;

Life is consummate then solely in the death of a burn-
ing embrace."

And at length when that Voice sank mute, and silence
fell over all

Save the tinkling thin of that lute, the deep heavens
rushed down like a pall,

The stars and the moon for a time with all their splen-
dours of light,

Were quenched with that Voice sublime, and great dark-
ness filled the night . . . •

When I felt again the scent of the night-flowers rich and
sweet,

As ere my senses went, and knew where I stood on my
feet,

And saw the yet-bright bay and the moon gone low in
my dream,

The boat had passed away with Her the Singer supreme ;

She was gone, the marvellous Singer whose wonderful
world-wide fame

Could never possibly bring her a tithe of her just acclaim.

He Heard her Sing. 53

And I wandered all night in a trance of rapture and
yearning and love,

And saw the dim grey expanse flush far with the dawn-
ing above ;

And I passed that copse in the night, but the nightin-
gales all were dumb

From their passionate aching delight, and perhaps who-
ever should come

On the morrow would find, I have read, under its bush
or its tree

Some poor little brown bird dead, dead of its melody,

Slain by the agitation, by the stress and the strain of the
strife,

And the pang of the vain emulation in the music yet
dearer than life.

And I heard the skylarks singing high in the morning
sun,

All the sunrise heavens ringing as the sunset heavens had
done:

And ever I dreamed and pondered while over the frag-
rant soil.

My happy footsteps wandered before I resumed my
toil : —

Truly, my darling, my Alice, truly the whole night long

Have I filled to the brim love's chalice with the wine of
music and song.

54 He Heard her Sing.

I have passed and repassed your door from the singing

until the dawn
A dozen times and more, and ever the curtains drawn ;
And now that the morn is breaking out of the stillness

deep,
Sweet as my visions of waking be all your visions of sleep !
Could you but wake, O my dearest, a moment, and give

one glance.
Just a furtive peep the merest, to learn the day's advance !
For I must away up the dale and over the hill to my toil,
And the night's rich dreams grow pale in the working

day's turmoil ;
But to-night, O my darling, my Alice, till night it will not

be long.
We will fill to the brim love's chalice with the wine of

music and song ;
And never the memory fails of what I have learnt in my

dream
From the song of the nightingales and the song of the

Singer supreme : —
"Love, love only, for ever ; love with its torture and bliss ;
All the world's glories can never equal two souls in

one kiss :
Love, love ever and wholly; love in all time and all space ;
Love is consummate then solely in the death of a burn-
ing embrace."

February, 1882.

( 55 )

THE POET AND HIS MUSE.

I SIGHED unto my Muse, " O gentle Muse,

Would you but come and kiss my aching brow,
And thus a little life and joy infuse

Into my brain and heart so weary now ;
Into my heart so sad with emptiness
Even when unafflicted by the stress

Of all our kind's poor life ;
Into my brain so feeble and so listless,
Crushed down by burthens of dark thought resistless
Of all our want and woe and unresulting strife.

" Would you but come and kiss me on the brow.

Would you but kiss me on the pallid lips
That have so many years been songless now,
And on the eyes involved in drear eclipse ;
That thus the barren brain long overwrought
Might yield again some blossoms of glad thought,

And the long-mute lips sing,
And the long-arid eyes grow moist and tender
With some new vision of the ancient splendour
Of beauty and delight that lives in everything.

>

5^ The Poet and his Muse,

" Would you but kiss me on the silent lips

And teach them thus to sing some new sweet song ;
Would you but kiss my eyes from their eclipse

With some new tale of old-world right and wrong :
Some song of love and joy or tender grief
Whose sweetness is its own divine relief,

Whose joy is golden bliss ;
Some solemn and impassioned antique story
Where love against dark doom burns out in glory,
Where life is freely staked to win one mutual kiss.

" Would you but sing to me some new dear song

Of love in bliss or bale alike supreme ;
Some story of our old-world right and wrong

With noble passion burning through the theme :
What though the story be of darkest doom,
If loyal spirits shining through its gloom

Throb to us from afar ?
What though the song with heavy sorrows languish,
If loving hearts pulse to us through its anguish ?
,Js not the whole black night enriched by one pure star? "

And lo ! She came, the ever-gentle Muse,
Sad as my heart, and languid as my brain ;

Too gentle in her loving to refuse.

Although her steps were weariness and pain ;

The Poet and his Muse. 57

Although her eyes were blank and lustreless,
Although her form was clothed with heaviness

And drooped beneath the weight ;
Although her lips were blanched from all their

blooming,
Her pure face pallid as from long entombing,
Her bright regard and smile sombre and desolate. ^-

" Sad as thy heart and languid as thy brain

I come unto thy sighing through the gloom,
I come with mortal weariness and pain,

I come as one compelled to leave her tomb :
Behold, am I not wrapt as in the cloud
Of death's investiture and sombre shroud ?

Am I not wan as death ?
Look at the withered leafage of my garland,
Is it not nightshade from the sad dim far land
Of night and old oblivion and no mortal breath ?

" I come unto thy sighing through the gloom,
My hair dishevelled dank with dews of night.

Reluctantly constrained to leave my tomb ;
With eyes that have for ever lost their light ;

My vesture mouldering with deep death's disgrace.

My heart as chill and bloodless as my face.
My forehead like a stone ;

58 The Poet and his Muse.

My spirit sightless as my eyes are sightless,
My inmost being nerveless, soulless, lightless.
My joyous singing voice a harsh sepulchral moan.

" My hair dishevelled dank with dews of night.
From that far region of dim death I come,

With eyes and soul and spirit void of light,

With lips more sad in speech than stark and dumb :

Lo, you have ravaged me with dolorous thought

Until my brain was wholly overwrought.
Barren of flowers and fruit ;

Until my heart was bloodless for all passion,

Until my trembling lips could no more fashion
Sweet words to fit sweet airs of trembling lyre and lute.

" From the sad regions of dim death I come ;

We tell no tales there for our tale is told,
We sing no songs there for our lips are dumb,

Likewise our hearts and brains are graveyard mould ;
No wreaths of laurel, myrtle, ivy or vine,
About our pale and pulseless brows entwine,

And that sad frustrate realm
Nor amaranths nor asphodels can nourish,
But aconite and black-red poppies flourish
On such Lethean dews as fair life overwhelm.

"We tell no tales more, we whose tale is told;
As your brain withered and your heart grew chill

The Poet and his Muse. 59

My heart and brain were turned to churchyard mould,

Wherefore my singing voice sank ever still ;
And I, all heart and brain and voice, am dead ;
It is my Phantom here beside your bed

That speaketh to you now ;
Though you exist still, a mere form inurning
The ashes of dead fires of thought and yearning,
Dead faith, dead love, dead hope, in hollow breast and
brow.*'

When It had moaned these words of hopeless doom,

The Phantom of the Muse once young and fair,
Pallid and dim from its disastrous tomb,

Of Her so sweet and young and d'ebonnaire^
So rich of heart and brain and singing voice.
So quick to shed sweet tears and to rejoice

And smile with ravishing grace ;
My soul was stupified by its own reaping,
Then burst into a flood of passionate weeping,
Tears bitter as black blood streaming adown my face.

" O Muse, so young and sweet and glad and fair,
O Muse of hope and faith and joy and love,

O Muse so gracious and so dkbonnaire^

Darling of earth beneath and heaven above ;

If Thou art gone into oblivious death,

Why should I still prolong my painful breath ?

6o The Poet and his Muse.

Why still exist, the urn
Holding of once-great fires the long-dead ashes,
No sole spark left of all their glow and flashes,
Fires never to rekindle more and shine and burn ?

" O Muse of hope and faith and joy and love,
Soul of my soul, if Thou in truth art dead,
A mournful alien in our world above,

A Phantom moaning by my midnight bed ;
How can I be alive, a hollow form
With ashes of dead fires once bright and warm ?

What thing is worth my strife ?
The Past a great regret, the Present sterile.
The Future hopeless, with the further peril
Of withering down and down to utter death-in-life.

" Soul of my soul, canst Thou indeed be dead ?

What mean for me if I accept their lore
I'hy words, O Phantom moaning by my bed,

** I cannot sing again for evermore " ?
/ nevermore can think or feel or dream
Or hope or love — the fatal loss supreme !

I am a soulless clod ;
No germ of life within me that surpasses
The little germs of weeds and flowers and grasses
Wherewith our liberal Mother decks the graveyard sod.

The Poet and his Muse, 6i

" I am half-torpid yet I spurn this lore,

I am long silent yet cannot avow
My singing voice is lost for evermore ;

For lo, this beating heart, this burning brow,
This spirit gasping in keen spasms of dread
And fierce revulsion that it is not dead,

This agony of the sting :
What soulless clod could have these tears and sobbings.
These terrors that are hopes, these passionate throb -
bings ?
Dear Muse, revive 1 we yet may dream and love and
sing ! "

February f 1 882.

( 6a )

THE SLEEPER/

The fire is in a steadfast glow,

The curtains drawn against the night ;

Upon the red couch soft and low
Between the fire and lamp alight

She rests half-sitting, half-reclining.

Encompassed by the cosy shining,

Her ruby dress with lace trimmed white.

Her left hand shades her drooping eyes

Against the fervour of the fire.
The right upon her cincture lies

In languid grace beyond desire,
A lily fallen among roses ;
So placidly her form reposes,

It scarcely seemeth to respire.

She is not surely all awake,

As yet she is not all asleep ;
The eyes with lids half open take

A startled deprecating peep

^ Reprinted, by permission, from the Cornhill Magazine.

The Sleeper. 63

Of quivering drowsiness, then slowly

The lids sink back, before she wholly

Resigns herself to slumber deep.

The side-neck gleams so pure beneath

The underfringe of gossamer.
The tendrils of whose faery wreath

The softest sigh suppressed would stir.
The little pink-shell ear-rim flushes
With her young blood's translucent blushes,

Nestling in tresses warm as fur.

The contour of her cheek and chin
Is curved in one delicious line,

Pure as a vase of porcelain thin

Through which a tender light may shine ;

Her brow and blue-veined temple gleaming

Beneath the dusk of hair back-streaming
Are as a virgin's marble shrine.

The ear is burning crimson fire,
The flush is brightening on the face.

The lips are parting to suspire,
The hair grows restless in its place

As if itself new tangles wreathing ;

The bosom with her deeper breathing
Swells and subsides with ravishing grace.

64 The Sleeper.

The hand slides softly to caress,

Unconscious, that fine-pencilled curve

" Her lip's contour and downiness,"
Unbending with a sweet reserve ;

A tender darkness that abashes

Steals out beneath the long dark lashes.
Whose sightless eyes make eyesight swerve.

The hand on chin and throat downslips,
Then softly, softly on her breast ;

A dream comes fluttering o'er the lips, '
And stirs the eyelids in their rest,

And makes their undershadows quiver,

And like a ripple on a river

Glides through her breathing manifest.

I feel an awe to read this dream

So clearly written in her smile ;
A pleasant not a passionate theme,

A little love, a little guile ;
I fear lest she should speak revealing
The secret of some maiden feeling

I have no right to hear the while.

The dream has passed without a word
. Of all that hovered finely traced ;

The Sleeper, 65

The hand has slipt down, gently stirred

To join the other at her waist ;
Her breath from that light agitation
Has settled to its slow pulsation ;

She is by deep sleep re-embraced.

Deep sleep, so holy in its calm,

So helpless, yet so awful too ;
Whose silence sheds as sweet a balm

As ever sweetest voice could do ;
Whose trancbd eyes, unseen, unseeing,
Shadowed by pure love, thrill our being

With tender yearnings through and through.

Sweet sleep ; no hope, no fear, no strife ;

The solemn sanctity of death,
With all the loveliest bloom of life ;

Eternal peace in mortal breath :
Pure sleep from which she will awaken
Refreshed as one who hath partaken

New strength, new hope, new love, new faith.

January y 1882.

R

( 66 )

MODERN PENELOPE.

(riddle solved.)

What did she mean by that crochet work ?

The work that never got done,
Lolling as indolent as a Turk,

Looking demure as a Nun :
What subtle mystery might lurk

(Of course there must be one)
In that Penelope web of work,

The work that never got done ?

She lolled on the low couch just under the light

So very serene and staid :
We had some other guests that night,

One sang, another played,
A couple discovered the stars were bright,

Of course a youth and a maid,
I watched her knitting under the light

So very serene and staid.

I knew that she was a rogue in her heart,
As roguish as ever could be,

Modem Penelope. 67

And she knew that I knew, yet would not dart

A single glance at me,
But seemed as it were withdrawn apart

Amid the companie,
A nun in her face, with a rogue in her heart

As roguish as ever could be.

I like a riddle when its knot

Involves a pretty girl,
I puzzle about, now cold, now hot,

Through every loop and twirl.
For the question is " Who " as well as " What " ?

And the answer is thus a pearl.
And really you cannot study the knot,

Unless you study the girl.

With a graceful lazy kittypuss air

She fingered the net and the ball :
At first she started to work on the square.

And then she undid all :
To make it round was next her care,

But the progress was strangely small.
With a graceful lazy kittypuss air

Trifling with net and ball.

About her lips a quiet smile
Came hovering, then took rest :

68 Modern Penelope.

A butterfly in the selfsame style
Will choose some sweet flower's breast :

Her eyes were drooping all the while,
But the drooping lids expressed

The satisfection of a smile
Like a butterfly at rest.

Her hands kept floating to and fro

Like a pair of soft white doves,
In gentle dalliance coy and slow

Around a nest of Loves :
And against my chair her couch was low,

And six was the size of her gloves.
They were charming those hands there to and fro

Like a pair of soft white doves.

Her fair face opened like a flower,

And a sigh thrilled the smile on her lips,
And her eyes shone out with a dazzling power

From the dream of their half-eclipse
As she welcomed the trill of " A summer shower '*

With plausive finger-tips —
Oh ! her eyes so bright, and her face like a flower,

And the exquisite smile of her lips !

Those hands kept floating soft and white
Our hearts to mesmerise,

Modern Penelope. 69

I'hose dark eyes keep half-veiled their light

To lure and lure our eyes ;
That web is but a subtle sleight

To mesh us by surprise :
Do I not read your riddle right,

Penelope the wise ?

O you nun in face with the rogue in your heart

As roguish as ever can be,
You have played an immensely wiser part

Than the old Penelope :
You have caught twin loves in the toils of your art.

And neither will ever get free :
You have won the game of a heart for a heart.

And when shall the settling be ?

1882.

( 70 )

AT BELVOIR:

Sunday^ July 3, 1881 :

A BALLAD, HISTORICAL AND PROPHETIC

("/« maiden meditation^ fancy freer)

My thoughts go back to last July,

Sweet happy thoughts and tender ; —
" The bridal of the earth and sky,"

A day of noble splendour ;
A day to make the saddest heart

In joy a true believer ;
When two good friends we roamed apart

The shady walks of Belvoir.

A maiden like a budding rose,

Unconscious of the golden
And fragrant bliss of love that glows

Deep in her heart infolden ;
A Poet old in years and thought,

Yet not too old for pleasance.
Made young again and fancy-fraught

By such a sweet friend's presence.

At Belvoir. 7 r

The other two beyond our ken

Most shamefully deserted,
And far from all the ways of men

Their stealthy steps averted :
Of course our Jack would go astray,

Erotic and erratic ;
But Mary 1 — well, I own the day

Was really too ecstatic

We roamed with many a merry jest

And many a ringing laughter ;
The slow calm hours too rich in zest

To heed before and after :
Yet lingering down the lovely walks

Soft strains anon came stealing,
A finer music through our talks

Of sweeter, deeper feeling :

Yes, now and then a quiet word

Of seriousness dissembling
In smiles would touch some hidden chord

And set it all a-trembling :
I trembled too, and felt it strange ; —

Could I be in possession
Of music richer in its range

Than yet had found expression ?

72 At Belvoir.

The cattle standing in the mere,

The swans upon it gliding,
The sunlight on the waters clear,

The radiant clouds dividing ;
The solemn sapphire sky above,

The foliage lightly waving,
The soft air's Sabbath peace and love

To satisfy all craving.

We mapped the whole fair region out

As Country of the Tender,
From first pursuit in fear and doubt

To final glad surrender :
Each knoll and arbour got its name,

Each vista, covert, dingle ; —
No young pair now may track the same

And long continue single !

And in the spot most thrilling-sweet

Of all this Love-Realm rosy
Our truant pair had found retreat.

Unblushing, calm and cosy :
Where seats too wide for one are placed.

And yet for two but narrow.
It's " Let my arm steal round your waist,

And be my winsome marrow ! "

At Belvoir. 73

Reclining on a pleasant lea

Such tender scenes rehearsing,
A freakish fit seized him and me

For wildly foolish versing :
We versed of this, we versed of that,

A pair of mocking sinners,
While our lost couple strayed or sat

Oblivious of their dinners.

But what was strange, our maddest rhymes

In all their divagations
Were charged and over-charged at times

With deep vaticinations :
I yearn with wonder at the power

Of Poetry prophetic
Which in my soul made that blithe hour

With this hour sympathetic.

For though we are in winter now,

My heart is in full summer :
Old Year, old Wish, have made their bow ;

I welcome each new-comer.
" The King is dead, long live the King 1

The throne is vacant never ! "
Is true, I read, of everything,

So of my heart for ever !

74 -^^ Belvoir.

My thoughts go on to next July,

More happy thoughts, more tender ;
" The bridal of the earth and sky,"

A day of perfect splendour ;
A day to make the saddest heart

In bliss a firm believer ;
When two True Loves may roam apart

The shadiest walks of Belvoir.

There may be less of merry jest

And less of ringing laughter,
Yet life be much more rich in zest

And richer still thereafter ;
The love-scenes of that region fair

Have very real rehearsing,
And tremulous kisses thrill the air

Far sweetlier than sweet versing ;

The bud full blown at length reveal

Its deepest golden burning ;
The heart inspired with love unseal

Its inmost passionate yearning :
The music of the hidden chord

At length find full expression ;
The Seraph of the Flaming Sword

Assume divine possession.

January^ 1882.

( 75 )

A STRANGER.

I.

It is not surely, this, a little thing,

That day and night and every Sabbath day
Throughout these months of winterless glad Spring,

March mild as April, April sweet as May,

And May as rich as June in common years.
It has been given me upon my way,

Given to me and all my village peers.

But most to me as my full heart knows well,
Brimming my eyes with tender wistful tears

And throbbing with strange awe ineffable.

To meet and pass, to follow with slow pace,
Or on the street or in our quiet dell -

Or through the fields, that Lady of all grace
With sweet sad eyes and noble mournful face.

II.

We know not who she is or whence she came.

She and her little boy with her own eyes
And brow and patient smile, whose Christian name

7 6 A Stranger.

Without the surname tells us where he lies

With her heart buried in the selfsame grave :
The larks were singing in the soft blue skies,

And even some few violets were brave

To breathe faint sweetness on the bland warm air,
Good Valentine such benediction gave,

When she arrived with him, her anxious care,

Her only joy, her terrible dark grief:
In early April he was lying there ;

The Spring all blithe with bud and flower and leaf
And scent and song above his Spring so brief.

HI.

Only the Christian name upon the stone

Above the date of birth and date of death ;
Two syllables of everlasting moan.

Immortal sorrow breathing mortal breath,

Continual weeping that would fain not weep.
Sad comforting that vainly comforteth

The deadly anguish graven far more deep
Upon the heart than on the marble cold
" For so He giveth His belovM sleep."

A Stranger. "j^j

Yet with a lofty patience she controlled

The outward signs of anguish ; eve and morn
Tending that little bed of sacred mould

And others near it that were left forlorn ;
Praying, I think, to sleep herself outworn.

IV.

Her sorrow flowed with blessings from above ;
Her heart of joy and hope was in that tomb,
But not her heart of sympathy and love :

While her young flower was fading from its bloom

She had been wonderfully sweet and kind ;
And now that it was buried in the gloom

Her own sore suffering did but closelier bind

Her heart to other hearts in all distress ;
The little angel in her sad soul shrined

Was a true angel of pure gentleness

And soft compassion and unwearying will
To soothe and aid and with all solace bless :

Our joys and sorrows take our nature still ]

Hers wrought bright good from her own darkest ilL

78 A Stranger.

V.

Tenderness, worship, bliss in yearning pain ! —

To see her young and fair and more than fair,
Amidst us yet not of us, sole remain

As sanctified already unaware ;

To see the peacefulness of pure white brow
Beneath the smoothness of the rich brown hair ;

The cloistral solitude without the vow ;
The self-renunciation mild and meek
With meekness that is ever glad to bow,

Evading honours such as others seek.

Yet in its stooping cannot help but rise ;
To hear that soft slow voice its good words speak ;

To feel the fascination of those eyes.
Solemn and dark and deep as midnight skies.

VL

I did not wonder she could be so pure

Amidst our petty cares and sordid strife.
But how our common meanness could endure

A Stranger. 79

Beneath the lofty radiance of her life ;

Until I saw how, fine and soft and clear
As starbeams quivering through the darkness rife,

Her effluence shone on souls all dull and drear :

Then as the Moon in moving through the Night
Bears round her ever her own hemisphere

Of tranquil beauty and entrancing light

By solemn shadows more mysterious made,
Her regnant beauty turned all darkness bright

Or glorified mysteriously its shade ;

Fair Queen most queenly as in Night arrayed.

VII.

Oh, joyless joy of this most bounteous June,
For with the Maytide She is gone, is gone !
All men adore and love the one sole Moon ;

But she of all on whom her light has shone,

Of all her pure and gracious light has blest,
Discerns no mortal save Endymion,

To him alone unveils her virgin breast.

On him alone outpours her love divine.
What shall we do who undistinguished rest ?

So A Stranger.

Shall we against her solemn choice repine ?

Or shall we rather lift our souls above
To hold her ever in a crystal shrine,

The perfect beauty of Heaven's brooding Dove,
The sacred vision of Heaven's reachless Love ?

March f 1882.

( 8i )

LAW V. GOSPEL.^

The Gospel and the Law of late

Have been at sad dissension
Before the Judge and Magistrate :

Old Satan's last invention.
Of course the Law upholds the Law,

The Gospel over-ruling ;
And those who have St. Paul in awe

Must seek more modern schooling.

The Gospel says, Swear not at all ;

The Law, or good or bad law,
Says, You must swear, whatever befall.

Or else I fine you, Bradlaugh.
Whereon he goes and swears himself

In solemn legal banter ;
His fellow-members on the shelf

Deposit him instanter.

^ This and the two pieces following are reprinted from the
Weekly Dispatch, "Despotism Tempered by Dynamite" was the
last poem written by the author.

F

83 Law V. Gospel.

And then we have that narrow sect

Of most Peculiar People,
Who by the Book their way direct,

And not by the Church steeple.
They read how Asa sought not God,

But doctors, being sickly ;
And therefore slept beneath the sod

With his forefathers quickly.

St. James enjoins, When one is ill.

Send for an elder straightway ;
Anoint and pray (no doctor's bill !)

And thus elude Death's gateway.
So said so done ; and then report

Of death of son or daughter,
And parents sentenced by the Court

To prison for manslaughter.

And now a new and noisy set —

The Army of Salvation —
Our equal-minded justice fret

With constant botheration :
For sometimes they obstruct the way.

And sometimes cause a riot ;
Too much of zeal — too much, we say,

Why can't the fools keep quiet ?

Law V. Gospel. 83

The dean and canons in their stalls

Are placid as stalled cattle,
And never rush out from St Paul's

To give the devil battle.
In streets and lanes to brawl and fight

Is far too low and rowdy ;
No, if he wants a spar, invite

Him home to Mrs. Proudie.

On Tuesday, March, the fourteenth day.

Before Sir Thomas Owden,
A youth was brought who blocked the way.

Already over-crowden —
Threadneedle-street — the wild War Cry,

This well-dressed youth was selling :
A camel and a needle's eye —

The rest requires no telling.

Sir Thomas said he understood

How men in shabby raiment,
To get a living, bad or good.

Should do this thing for payment ;
But he could never understand

How any young man, dressed all
In decent clothes, could join the band,

Like this young Henry Restall.

84 Law V. Gospel.

" It's not to get a living, sir,"

This youth spoke fast and faster ;
" I have been called to minister —

I work for God, my Master."
Sir Thomas answered (much I grieve

If you don't find it bon sens),
He never could be made believe

In such outrageous nonsense.

This hardened youth he made reply,

" We have reformed some thousand
Poor drunkards ; " Sir T. winked full sly,

And sneezing sneered, ^^ Z>er Tausend/"
And for a fortnight did remand.

Upon his good behaviour.
That youth, who now should understand

He mustn't cry his Saviour.

Just think of Simon Peter thus.

And all the zealous dozen,
Brought up before Asinius,

Our Owden's great fore-cousin.
He would have quickly stopped their prate

On a police-court summons ;
We should have no Archbishop Tait,

No pious House of Commons !

Law V. Gospel. 85

'Tis true they were but fishermen

And suchlike, poor and humble ;
And thus might earn a living then

Approved by every Bumble.
But preach a Gospel nof for pelf !

Absurd to Owden thinkers ! —
Just keep your Good News to yourself,

And cease reforming drinkers !

March f 1882.

— *^/r^

( 86 )

THE OLD STORY AND THE NEW

STOREY.

(House of Commons, Thursday March 23.)

" For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have
more abundance : but whosoever hath not, from him shall be
taken away even that he hath." — Matthew xiii. 12.

The Old Story says : We've another

Young prince who will wed like a man ;
Let us give him, because of his mother,

An extra ten thousand per ann.
She has barely enough for herself, sirs ;

Not five hundred a week is his sum ;
Some of you have vastly more pelf, sirs ;

Let our vote be unanimous, come !

The New Storey ^ says — (It is mentioned
How, hating such meanness to hear.

The noble array of the pensioned

Assailed him with laughter and jeer) —

^ Mr, Storey, M.P. for Sunderland.

The Old Story and the New Storey. 87

He says : Public money should solely

For good public service be spent
(Dear lords, what a doctrine unholy !

Why it saps at your rights to your rent !)

He says : What I urge 'gainst a wasteful

And unjust proposal like this
Must to many of you be distasteful,

And the wherefore too palpable is ;
Since one hundred and ten of your body,

And one hundred and twenty-six peers,
For no service, or service of shoddy

Keep bleeding us numberless years.

He says : This ten thousand per annum

You would lavish on one wealthy pair —
Many hundred a grandad and grannam

Would keep in a comfort too rare ;
Or in Sunderland — that's my own borough —

A small place — laugh on ! — would secure
Education quite free and quite thorough

Without any rate on the poor.

He says : These same princes as dummies

In array and navy fill posts.
While veterans, scorched up like mummies.

Must starve in the cold like their ghosts.

88 The Old Story and the New Storey,

He says : Sweep away lordly flunkeys,
If you really this money must clutch,

Those bedizened and posturing monkeys —
Your Gold Sticks in Waiting and such.

He says — But fine ears we won't batter

With more of his speech unpolite ;
So we'll give our own view of the matter,

And our view of course is the right.
We say : When your State-ship you're building,

If you will have a gilt figure-head,
Of course you must pay for the gilding ;

We say — there's no more to be said.

It is true that the head a ship carries

In proportion costs little when built ;
It is true that this head never marries

And breeds little heads to be gilt.
It is true — but sane words are a treasure

Too precious for subjects like these —
Having set up such heads at your pleasure,

You can set them aside when you please.

April, 1882.

( 89 )

DESPOTISM TEMPERED BY
DYNAMITE.

There is no other title in the world
So proud as mine, who am no law-cramped king,
No mere imperial monarch absolute,
The White Tsar worshipped as a visible God,
As Lord of Heaven no less that Lord of Earth —
I look with terror to my crowning day.

Through half of Europe my dominions spread,
And then through half of Asia to the shores
Of Earth's great ocean washing the New World ;
And nothing bounds them to the Northern Pole,
They merge into the everlasting ice —

I look with terror to my crowning day.

Full eighty million subjects worship me —
Their father, high priest, monarch, God on earth ;

90 Despotism Tempered by Dynamite.

My children who but hold their lives with mine
For our most Holy Russia dear and great,
Whose might is concentrated in my hands —
I look with terror to my crowning day.

I chain and gag with chains and gags of iron
The impious hands and mouths that dare express
A word against my sacred sovranty ;
The half of Asia is my prison-house,
Myriads of convicts lost in its Immense —
I look with terror to my crowning day.

I cannot chain and gag the evil thoughts
Of men and women poisoned by the West,
Frenzied in soul by the anarchic West ;
These thoughts transmute themselves to dynamite ;
My sire was borne all shattered to his tomb —
I look with terror to my crowning day.

My peasants rise to their unvarying toil,
And go to sleep outwearied by their toil,
Without the hope of any better life.
But with no hope they have no deadly fear,
They sleep and eat their scanty food in peace —
I look with terror to my crowning day.

Despotism Tempered by Dynamite, 91

My palaces are prisons to myself;
I taste no food that may not poison me ;
I plant no footstep sure it will not stir
Instant destruction of explosive fire ;
I look with terror to each day and night —
With tenfold terror to my crowning day.

Afay, 1882.

^i;«7^i

( 9^ )

THE DOOM OF A CITY.

A FANTASIA.

PART I.

THE CITY.

I.

The sky was spacious warm and bright,
The clouds were pure as morning snow ;
In myriad points of living light
The sea lay laughing to and fro.
Above the hills a depth of sky,
Dim-pale with heat and light intense.
Was overhung by clouds piled high
In mountain-ranges huge and dense ;
Whose rifts and ridges ran aloft
Far to their crests of dazzling snow,
Whence spread a vaporous lustre soft
Veiling the noontide's azure glow.

The Doom of a City. 93

Through mists of purple glory seen
Those dim and panting hill-waves lay,
Absorbed into the heavens serene,
Dissolving in the perfect day.

But when the sun burned high and bare
In his own realm of solemn blue^
The clouds hung isolated there.
Dark purple grandeurs vast and few ;
Like massive sculptures wrought at large
Upon that dome's immensity.
Like constant isles whose foamlit marge
Rose high from out that sapphire sea.

And all the day my boat sped on
With rapid gliding smooth as rest,
As if by mystic dreamings drawn
To some fair haven in the West ;
Flew onward swift without a gale
As if it were a living thing,
And spread with joy its snow-white sail
As spreads a bird its snow-white wing ;
Flashed on along the lucid deep
Dividing that most perfect sphere,
A vault above it glowing steep,
A vault beneath it no less clear ;

94 The Doom of a City.

Within whose burning sapphire-round
The clouds the air the land the sea
Lay thrilled with quivering glory, drowned
In calm as of Eternity.

II.

Anear the dying of that royal day >
Those amber-vested hills began to swerve \*
And soon a lofty Pharos, gleaming white ^
Upon its isle set darkly in the light, ^
Beckoned us onward to the spacious baycf
Encompassed broadly by their noble curve.^
And so at length we entered it ; and faced A
The thin dark lines of countless masts, all traced'
Upon the saddest sunset ever seen —
Spread out like an interminable waste
Of red and saffron sand, devoured by slow
Persistent fire ; beneath whose desolate glow
A City lay, thick-zoned with solemn green
Of foliage massed upon the steeps around.
Between those mast-lines flamed the crystal fires
Of multitudinous windows ; and on high
Grand marble palaces and temples, crowned
With golden domes and radiant towers and spires,
Stood all entranced beneath that desert sky,
Based on an awful stillness. Dead or dumb

The Doom of a City. 95

That mighty City through the breathless air
Thrilled forth no pulse of sound, no faintest hum
Of congregated life in street and square :
Becalmed beyond all calm those galleons lay,
As still and lifeless as their shadows there,
Fixed in the magic mirror of the bay
As in a rose-flushed crystal weirdly fair.
A strange, sad dream : and like a fiery pall.
Blazoned with death, that sky hung over all.

III.

Where, eastward from the town, the shore was

low,
I drew at length my shallop up the sand, —
The quiet and gloomless twilight gathering slow ;
And took my way across the lonely strand,
And onward to the City, lost in thought
Who shall his own wild life-course understand ?
From terror through great terrors I am brought
To front my fate in this mysterious land.
In my old common world, well fenced about
With myriad lives that fel lowed well my own.
Terror and deadly anguish found me out
And drove me forth to seek the dread Unknown ;
Through all whose terrors I have yet been brought.
Though hopeless, helpless, utterly alone.

g6 The Doom of a City,

May yet my long wild night be blessed with morn ?
Some revelation from the awful Throne
Awaits me surely : if my life, torn free
From dire Egyptian bondage, has been led
In safety through the all-devouring sea ;
If, lost in foodless deserts, it was fed
Though murmuring ever ; hath it truly trod
Such paths for nothing ? Shall it not be brought
To stand awe-stricken 'neath some Mount of God
Wrapt in thick clouds of thunder fire and gloom.
And hear the Law of Heaven by which its doom
To good or evil must be henceforth wrought ?

IV.

The moon hung golden large and round,
Soothing its beauty up the quiet sky
In swanlike slow pulsations, while I wound
Through dewy meads and gardens of rich flowers.
Whose fragrance like a subtle harmony
Was fascination to the languid hours.
A tender mist of light was interfused
Upon the hills and waters, woods and leas,
Throughout the gloomless gloaming ; and I mused
Dim thoughts deep-floating in delicious dream,
Until the long stern lines of cypress trees.
Amidst whose plumes funereal there did seem

The Doom of a City. 97

To creep with quivering sobs a moaning breath,
Awed back my heart to life — to life and death.
Far in the mystic moonlight lay outspread,
In trance of solemn beauty still and weird.
That Camp and City of the ancient dead ;
And far around stood up in dense array
Those monumental marbles ever reared
By men still battling with the powers of Life
To those released before them from its sway :
Victors or vanquished in the fearful strife.
What matters ? — ah, within our Mother's breast,
From toil and tumult, sin and sorrow free.
Sphered beyond hope and dread, divinely calm,
They lie, all gathered into perfect rest ;
And o'er the trance of their Eternity
The Cypress waves more holy than the palm.

V.

A funeral train was gathered round a bier :

The reverend priest with lifted hands and face.

Appealing silently to Heaven's grace

For this young soul called early from our sphere ;

And white-robed maidens pale, whose hands scarce held

What further symbol flowers they had to shed

Upon their sweet lost sister, — awe and dread

Numbing their noisier grief, they stood compelled

98 The Doom of a City,

To meet Death's eyes which wither youth from Life ;

And leaning sole against a tree apart,

As one might lean just stricken to the heart,

A youth, wrought calm by woe's self-slaying strife —

His head was sunken nerveless on his breast,

He stood a dumb blind statue of Despair.

While all yet moved not, I approached them there,

Murmuring : They bring this maiden to her rest

Beneath the pure sad moon, in thoughtful night,

Rather than in the garish day whose King

Rides through the Heavens for ever triumphing

Throned above ruth in never-darkened light ;

That ere the blank dawn chills them they may gaze,

And see her soul as some white cloud on high

Floating serenely up the star-strewn sky. . . .

My steps were now close near them, when amaze

Convulsed me with a swooning suddenness —

What people dwell within this Silent Land,

Who thus have placed, through day and night to stand,

This Scene complete in all its images

Of Life in solemn conference with Death,

Amidst the wide and populous solitude

Of Death's own realm ? — z. people of strange mood.

For all, — the maidens meek with bated breath

And eyes weighed down by awe and fear and sorrow,

The priest appealing to the Heavens above,

The Doom of a City, 99

The youth whose mortal night could hope no morrow,
The sweet young girl new riven from his love, —
All save the flowers, the withered flowers atone,
Were carven weirdly in unconscious stone.

VI.

Beneath my gaz6 was spread the princely mart.

From out the folded hills came broad the stream

Whose pulse flowed lifefuU through the City's heart —

The City dead in ever-voiceless dream.

From all her stately mansions, reared apart

'Midst lawns and gardens, came no lamplight gleam,

No cheerful glow and smoke of household fire ;

No festal music dying through the night.

Sad in its death as joyous in its birth ;

No serenades intoning soft desire,

To which young hearts in secret throb delight ;

No noise of banded revellers issuing forth

With shouts and songs and jars,
Who find the pale moon reeling joUily
And twinkling laughters in the high cold stars.

Between the hills and sea

Only a dark dead dearth
Of soulless silence yawned in dreadful mystery.

loo The Doom of a City.

VII.
My limbs were shuddering while my veins ran fire,

And hounded on by dread

No less than by desire,
I plunged into the City of the Dead,
And pierced its Mausolean loneliness —
Between the self-sufficing palaces.
Broad fronts of azure, fire and gold, which shone
Spectrally pallid in the moonlight wan ;
Adown great streets ; through spacious sylvan squares.

Whose fountains plashing lone
Fretted the silence with perpetual moan ;
Past range on range of marts which spread their wares
Weirdly unlighted to the eyes of heaven,
Jewels and silks and golden ornaments.
Rich perfumes soul-in-soul of all rare scents,
Viols and timbrels, — O wild mockery !
Where are the living shrines for these adornings ?
Shall love-tormented phantoms hither hie.
Resolved that the tomb be no more mute,
And thrill their heart-sick plaints from lyre and lute
To plead against fair phantoms' cruel scornings ;
Wakening dim ghosts of buried melodies
To shiver out beneath the scornful skies.
And wander homeless till they fail of breath
About this desert realm of timeless death ?

The Doom of a City. loi

VIII.

What saw I in the City, which could make

All thought a frenzy and all feeling madness ?

What found I in the City for whose sake

Blank death were welcome as a restful gladness ?

I hold it truth, that what the stars and moon

Can gaze upon with clear and steadfast eyes,

Still soaring as of old to reach their noon,

Serenely regnant in unwithered skies ;

That scene should never fill a human being

With hopelessness of horror in the seeing.

Can souls be blighted where the mere trees grow ?

Can lives be frozen where the dead streams flow ?

Can Man be prostrate where the fleeting mountains

Stand up and fling abroad their joyous fountains ?

Could oceans, hills, stars, heavens, those imageries

And shadows of our sole realities.

Endure but for a moment undestroyed

Were we extinct — Eternity left void ?

O truth beyond our sin and death's concealing ! —

The ghastliest den, worst Hell of pain and fear,

In which a spirit can have will, thought, feeling,

Is to that spirit no unnatural sphere ;

Nor justifies that spirit for the death

Of firm self trust, of love and hope and faith.

I02 The Doom of a City,

IX.

What found I in the City, then, which turned

My deep and solemn hope to wild despair ?

What mystery of horror lay inurned

Within the royal Gity great and fair?

What found I ? — Dead stone sentries stony-eyed,

Erect, steel-sworded, brass-defended all,

Guarding the sombrous gateway deep and wide

Hewn like a cavern through the mighty wall ;

Stone statues all throughout the streets and squares,

Grouped as in social converse or alone ;

Dim stony merchants holding forth rich wares

To catch the choice of purchasers of stone ;

Fair statues leaning over balconies,

Whose bosoms made the bronze and marble chill ;

Statues about the lawns, beneath the trees ;

Firm sculptured horsemen on stone horses still ;

Statues fixed gazing on the flowing river

Over the bridge's sculptured parapet ;

Statues in boats, amidst its sway and quiver

Immovable as if in ice- waves set : —

The whole vast sea of life about me lay.

The passionate, heaving, restless, sounding life.

With all its tides and billows, foam and spray.

Arrested in full tumult of its strife

Frozen into a nightmare's ghastly death,

The Doom of a City, 103

Struck silent from its laughter and its moan ;

The vigorous heart and brain and blood and breath

Stark, strangled, coffined in eternal stone.

X.

Look away there to the right — How the bay lies broad
and bright,
All athrob with murmurous rapture in the glory of the
moon !
See in front the palace stand, halls and columns nobly
planned ;
Marble home for marble dwellers is it not full fair and
boon?
See the myriads gathered there in that green and wooded
square,
In mysteyous congregation, — they are statues every
one :
All are clothed in rich array ; it is some high festal day ;
The solemnity is perfect with that pallid moon for sun.
See the theatre ranged high to its dome of deep blue sky ;
Tier on tier of serried statues glare impassioned on its
stage.
On its background of deep night, on its sculptured Chorus
white.
On its lofty sculptured actors locked in deadly tragic
rage :

I04 The Doom of a City.

Perhaps the drama was too great, — Titans, Furies, eyeless
Fate
Brooded in such sulphurous darkness thunder-swollen
o'er its doom.
That the multitude abide overwrought and petrified,
Waiting till satyric sun-bursts rend away the crushing
gloom.
Turn, and o'er the river mark that huge structure scowling
dark :
It is black stone seamed with crimson, hopeless death
with cruel gore :
In it stony jailers guard stony prisoners evil-starred ;
Dungeoned thus within their dungeon, they are calm
and groan no more.
Note the temples every one — How the great gods are un-
done !
Not a steer or goat or doveling for their holy hunger
dies:
Cold, long quenched their sacred fires ; dull, long dumb
their flattering quires ;
All the very priesthood staring at rich gifts with stolid
eyes 1
Not a maid whose yielding charms can enrich a god's
bold arms ;
Yet perchance they dwell contented though thus shorn
of wealth and state :

The Doom of a City, 105

Nectar-and-ambrosia-blest, they may bask in perfect rest,
Since (with marble joints and larynx) Man rests unim-
portunate 1
Ha! search eagerly around — every vault beneath the
ground,
Every mansion, every chariot, every galley, everywhere ;
And for ever, ever find all this blissful human kind
Lifted up from clay's corruption into marble firm and
fair:
Fear and shame and anguish stilled, every evil passion
killed,
Crooked forms and ugly faces grown transcendent
works of art ;
While the grand or lovely mood of the fair and young
and good
Is beatified in beauty that can nevermore depart . . .
And the full moon gazeth down on the smokeless lamp-
less town.
In a solemn trance of triumph, with her choir of radiant
stars ;
For their peace is vext no more by a curse-and- shriek-
swelled roar.
By ferocities, obscenities, inebriate brawls and jars :
Nay, the very grass and trees, and the disencumbered
breeze.
And the stainless river-waters, and the broad bright
glittering bay, —

1 o6 The Doom of a City,

Do they all joy that the strife of our sordid restless life
Is now locked in adamantine bonds of perfect peace
for aye ?
Ever-loved and gracious Earth, Mystic Mother of our
birth,
This is cruel, bitter, terrible, this joy in our dead rest !
Canst Thou still leap forth and run, glory-speeded round
the Sun,
O Thou Niobe of World-stars, with Thy fairest ar^d Thy

best—
With Thy vigorous youthful darling lying stone-cold on
Thy breast I

XL

The Palace gates stand open wide and free ;
The King and Queen and all their company.
Transfigured in full splendour of their pride.
Came flowing forth in one refulgent tide.
While trumpets rang their silver-throated blare
Of jubilation through the sunny air ;
Swept onward slowly 'neath the azure skies
Between the myriads of adoring eyes,
And poured into the Theatre's dense sea
Of many-billowed life triumphantly ;
As some grand river in the sunset shine
May pour its boon of gold and crimson wine.

The Doom of a City. 107

Brimming the fulness of the purpled ocean

Which heaves and sparkles, murmuring proud emotion.

Gathered together, all awaited there

Such scenic storms as purify life's air ;

Whose scathless lightnings shimmer wildly grand.

Whose lofty thunders soothe sure peace more bland ;

And now, without a throb, without a breath,

They wait, all frozen into icy death.

XII.

O marble Monarch, far more awful now

Than when thy crown begirt a throbbing brow !

No tyrant ever lived so dire and dread

As He who sways the sceptre in thy stead ;

Never before on earth did any state

Beneath oppression cower thus desolate.

Thus utterly resigned to crushing Fate !

Silence broods ghastly on the dead realm's throne :

Whatever life, in prayer, or sigh, or moan,

Would shake the Nightmare of his tyranny,

Shudders with anguish, horror, lunacy,

To feel its scorned and strangled pleadings creep

Like homeless spectres through the vacant deep,

And wither into nothingness at last —

Devoid of refuge, unrelieved, aghast.

io8 The Doom of a City,

XIII.

The Palace gates indeed stand open wide :
Perchance the stately sepulchre may hide
Some single life amidst the desolation,
Preserved alone in mystical salvation,
Entranced apart in holy contemplation ?
Pace up the steps, tread throiigh the hall,^and see
In scattered groups all lounging listlessly
Those armoured gallants of the Royal Guard —
Poor fellows ! they have found it sadly hard
To make their stately moments speed along,
Though spurred with wine and gaming, jest and song,
Cruelly mulcted of their sumptuous share
In the great festival proceeding there.

XIV.

Haste on, haste on ; awaken from their tomb
The ghostly echoes, swarming through the gloom.
Haunting your footsteps, gathering rank on rank,
Rustling demoniac through the deadly blank ;
Better, far better that the air be rife
With weird deliriums of demoniac life.
Than void with utter idiotic death.
Haste on, with burning blood and breathless breath;-

The Doom of a City. 109

How clear are all things round the rapid flight !

Shrouded in gloom or washed with pale moonlight,

The chemistry of terror thus intense

Burns them all lurid on the shrinking sense. —

See the mild maiden letting loose her soul

In tears and blushes o'er the tender scroll

Which plains his anguish since they two were parted,

And raves that she, poor thing, is stony-hearted.

Hurry from room to room, from hall to hall ;

And mark the effigies on every wall —

Warriors and minstrels, nobles. Kings, and priests.

Adoring, conquering, feasting royal feasts ;

Olympian forms, ladies divinely fair

With lily-sceptred hands and flower-crowned hair ;

See each and all ev'n as you hurry past

Burst into sudden life, and swarming fast

Join in the tingling chase through death and night,

While clamorous echoes voice their mad delight.

XV.

Most sweet young Mother ! thou hadst ample pleasure
Left guiet alone here with thine infant treasure ;
Which, poised unsurely on its feeble limbs.
Across the sea-strange marble toward thee swims, —
One foot half-lifted, while the arms outplead
For thine extended arms to help' its need :

no The Doom of a City,

It stands, thou kneelest ; never on thy breast
Shall it fall forward in triumphant rest

XVI.

Far in his lofty turret whence the bay

And half of Heaven's vault were seen alway ;

The bay, the distant ocean, and with these

Broad scope of temples streets and palaces,

The theatre, the square ; the moving throngs,

Whose converse-murmurs flashing into songs

And laughters winged with joy were wont to rise

And wander birdlike through the sun-tranced skies,

Rippling deliciously the languid air;

Alone, yet not alone, the Sage dwelt there.

Doubtless his individual life required

In seeming solitude to be inspired

By constant intercourse with general life,

And with the universal Spirit rife

In Man and Nature, — One in all their forms.

Alike contented with its worlds and worms.

Through all its countless m^sks alike resplendent.

The Breath of Life,, eternal and- transcendent

XVIL

He sits, the full-length statue of a Sagie,
Amid the busts of those of every age

The Doom of a City, 1 1 j

Who handed on the torch of Wisdom, bright
With growing splendour, 'thwart the billowy night
Of shoreless Ignorance. Before him lies
The roll which telleth on what mysteries
He shed its lustre till they shone out clear :
I trace its periods by the moonlight here.
It is with swelling reverence dedicate,
" Unto the King magnifical and great ;
The bounteous Sun by whom we live and move
And flourish ever : Who commands our love
Even more throughly than our perfect awe ;
Swaying His burning Throne by Heavenly law,
While lifted far — by nature as by birth-
Above the petty statutes of our earth :
Who while His warmth createth and sustaineth
Rich life in all, lights all ; and no less deigneth
To feed abundantly with life and light
What humble spheres may strive to temper night
In realms left dark while His imperial sway
Vouchsafeth happier realms their boon of day :
To Him, by Whom our heritage is grown
The flower o' the World; to Him whose godlike throne
Shall ever stand beside its subject sea.
Fulgent with valour, arts and equity.
Based on a princely people's love and bliss :
Chrysandros, Tyrant of Gosmopolis ! "

112 The Doom of a City,

XVI 11.

Follow the problems which he hath resolved

Though heretofore in clouds of doubts involved :

" Shall this fair World consume in course of time ?

Our Earth is young ? or old ? or in her prime ? "

Whereto the Theses proud, less said than sung

In liberal phrases of his golden tongue :

" This glorious Universe shall live for ever ;

By all decay and death diminished never,

Nor added to by constant birth and growth ;

But in the balanced interchange of both.

Ascending slowly by successive stages

Of nobler Good and Beauty through the Ages ;

Until its infinite ^ther and the Whole

Of stars and spheres that through it flashing roll

Shall be informed with conscious Life and Soul :

The All, one perfect Sphere, breathing one breath

Of cosmic Life too pure for birth or death. . . .

Our Earth has scarcely ceased to be a child.

Sweet in its grace, but ignorant and wild :

She putteth on about these very years

The bloom of maidenhood, whose smiles and tears

Are all of Love : she openeth out her heart

In throbs of passionate rapture, to impart

The Doom of a City, 113

The dearest secrets of her treasured beauty
To Man, her Lord ; constrained by yearning duty
Which he shall recompense with wiser love :
How blest are we all previous men above,
Born in this Spring of her millennial Youth ! —

gracious Truth, divine and tranquil Truth,
As I long years have worshipped only Thee,
Thou hast at length unveiled Thy face to me,
That I may ever of Thy priesthood be ! "

XIX.

1 trace not further in the tingling scroll

The steps by which he reached this glorious goal.

It is too horrible : — alone, alone,

I make mad dalliance with the empty flesh,

Whose form is whole, whose ghastly bloom is fresh ;

And by my side, that hater of the soul —

The grinning, the accursed Skeleton !

It is too horrible — O dreadful God,

Thou know'st — only Thou,

What dismal paths my shuddering feet have trod ;

Yet never knew I agony until now ;

Never, — O Thou who heardst me when I said
IP

Coldly and quietly, with confirming heart,
" I take thee. Misery, for my faithful Bride :
Despair hath smoothed the secret marriage-bed

H

114 The Doom of a City.

Wherein we two, embracing close, may hide,

And wreak our stern unwitnessed vow —
Never in life, nor after death, to part.
I love thee for the love which only Thou

Dost bear me : Thy caresses
Sting my faint heart, Thy kisses on my brow
Are fire and numbing frost. Thy tingling tresses
Like serpents creep about me even now.
O my enamoured Darling, deadly sweet !

Sorcery smitten Sorceress !

Queen of lurid loveliness !
Most tender-hearted ministrant of 111 1
My life, my soul is lying at your feet ;
Possess me, use me, at your own wild will ! "

XX.

fool, fool, fool ! cherishing fatal madness !
Mad with self-consciousness of guilt and woe.
Mad with the folly of the world's much gladness
While it was no less sunk in guilt and woe ;

1 shut myself up from the lives around me.
Eating my own foul heart — envenomed food ;

And while dark shadows more and more enwound me.
Nourished a dreary pride of solitude ;
The cords of sympathy which should have bound me
In sweet communion with earth's brotherhood.

The Doom of a City, 115

I drew in tight and tighter still around me,

Strangling my best existence for a mood.

What — Solitude in midst of a great City,

In midst of crowded myriads brimmed with Life ! —

When every tear of anguish or of pity,

When every shout of joy and scream of strife,

When every deed and word and glance and gesture,

Every emotion, impulse, secret thought

Pent in the soul from all material vesture,

Through all those myriads spread and interwrought ;

Inspiring each the air with its own spirit.

Rayed forth as light is from a fount intense ;

The universal -^ther forced to bear it,

A certain though mysterious influence

Affecting duly every other creature

That breathed its breath of life ; for good or ill.

For pain or pleasure, acting on each nature,

Beyond the consciousness, despite the will

Dire Vanity ! to think to break the union

That interweaveth strictly soul with soul

In constant, sane, life-nourishing communion :

The rivers ever to the ocean roll,

The ocean-waters feed the clouds on high

Whose rains descending feed the flowing rivers :

All the world's children must how quickly die

Were they not all receivers and all givers 1

] i6 The Doom of a City,

XXI.

But this is Solitude, O dreadful Lord !
My spirit starves in this abysmal air —

Of every human word,
Of sigh and moan, of music and of prayer,
Of passionate heart-beats felt though never heard,

So utterly stript bare :
The awful heavens are tranquil and divine.
Serene and saintly in their purple deep

The moon and young stars shine ;
No living souls beneath their influence leap,
No other eyes are fixed on them with mine :

Men said that Death and Sleep
Are brothers ; — yes, as lurid lightnings may
Be kindred to the glory of calm day,
Or darkness of the restful night-tide boon
To darkness of the sun eclipsed at noon. . . .
The Soul is murdered ; and her world bereft

By some dire doom still left,
A fadeless corpse whose perfect form is rife
"With ghastly affectations of true life."

XXII.

How long, how long, I cowered beside the Sage ;
Whose head was lifted, fronting full the skies

The Doom of a City, 1 1 7

In tranquil triumph from his victory lone.
Beneath that broad brow rough with thought and age,
The pitiless light-beams glittered on his eyes,
Like fatal swords flashed keen against a stone
To sharpen them for piercing to the heart, —
How was his triumph smitten, pierct, and slain !

But cowering there apart,
Upon those swelling eyeballs, that stern head,
I ever gazed ; while in my burning brain

A cold thought soothing spread :
As one who drains a poison-chalice slowly,
In fixed and infinite longing to be dead ;
So let my yearning vision cleave amain
To this grand marble image melancholy,
Till I have drunken in to the last drain
That poisonous Spirit of Death which fills it wholly. . . .
The flesh that crept like worms is growing numb ;
The raging fire of blood is dying cold ;
The rout of fiendish thoughts are almost dumb :
The heavens fade like a Vision cycles-old.
Where from dead eyes gaze thoughts uncomprehended :
Thank God, I soon shall cease to be alone ;
My mad discordant life is nearly blended
With all this realm's unsuffering death of stone.

( ii8 )

PART 11.

THE JUDGMENTS,

I.

A multitudinous roaring of the ocean !
Voices of sudden and earthquaking thunder

From the invisible mountains !
The heavens are broken up and rent asunder

By curbless lightning-fountains,
Streaming and darting through that black commotion,
In which the moon and stars are swallowed with the sky.
Throughout the Mausolean City spread
Drear palpitations, long-drawn moan and sigh ;
And then — an overwhelming whirlwind blast ?
Or else, indeed, the irrepressible cry
Of all its statues waking up aghast !
Doth God in final Judgment come thus heralded ?

II.

I saw Titanic forms dark, solemn, slow,
Like thunderclouds imperious o'er the wind
Sweep far with haughty tramplings to and fro ;

The Doom of a City. 119

I heard great voices peal and trumpets blow :
Strange fragments of their chanting shook my mind.

" If the owl haunts doleful ruins and lives in the sombre

night,
Could it joy in the cheerful homes of men, could it love

the noonday light ?
If the serpent couches in jungles and deserts of burning

sand,
Would it rather cast its slough in the peopled corn-rich

land ?
If the great bear prowls alone in desolate wastes of ice,
Could it joy to range in herded power through a tropic

Paradise ?
If the vulture gorges on carrion and all abhorrent things,
Would it rather slake with fruits and wine the rush of its

obscene wings ?

" We sought through the archives of Fate, through all the

records of Doom,
Records of noontide refulgence, records of lightning-seared

gloom :
And lo, we have never found while the highth and the

depth we explored^ ...

We have never yet traced out Punishment or Reward.

120 The Doom of a City.

" Peace may be happy and sweet ; bitter and heart-rend-
ing Strife ;
Sin is corruption and death, Virtue is health and life :
But every being is placed in that sphere, in that crisis,

that spot.
Which alone its own nature demands and asserts for its

lot:
As itself from itself its web the spider spins out,
Doth each all the net of relations which weave it about :
The sun shines the sun by the lustre he lavishes forth ;
For his might and his life and his light circles round him

the earth :
All the World — this infinite azure robe sphere-spangled

sublime,
In which God walks forth revealed and veiled to the

creatures of Space and Time,
Is all interwoven in one (each atom, each star, as each soul.
Evolving so duly the threads of its work for its part in

the Whole) :
With a woof and warp of might and light and mysteries

all is wrought.
For the many-figured many-hued being and passion and

thought.

" Here hath a spirit full bliss to breathe ever-bland golden
air;

The Doom of a City. I2i

Here hath a spirit wild hurrying storms of doubt, dread,

anguish, despair :
For the world-realms are swept on their path for ever,

through day and night ;
And their course is advanced no less, no more, in the

gloom than in the light :
And the journey is infinite truly, — through every various

clime
Do the countless myriads wander on, through every season

of time ;
Cool water for him in the desert-blaze, red fire for him

in the frost.
Languor for him in the summer-peace, fierce heart for the

tempest-tost :
While all whence they know not whither they know not

wend;
Who appraiseth the means and progress, who conceiveth

the end ?
But we swear by the Life Eternal, we swear by Eternal

Death,
We swear by the Fate supreme which rules in every pulse

and breath ;
That strong or weak, simple or wise, polluted or most holy
Each each day is fed with the food befitting him fully

and solely."

IZ2 The Doom of a City.

III.

Again deep peace, again the stars and moon :.
I stood between the theatre and square,
Beholding as before the statues there

Unstirred and silent in the lethal swoon.

Lo ! in the empyrean grew a light —

A great and awful Splendour, through its shroud
Of fold on fold of massy thundercloud

Intensely burning down with steadfast might.

Wherefrom a Voice descended vast and lone ;
Of thunder-dreadful ness, of sea-fierce anger,
Yet in its lofty silver-volumed clangour

Chanting an unimpassioned monotone :

"When all the wine is poisoned it must be

DESTROYJkD utterly ;
The vessels also which contained it must

Be burned and ground to dust."

Instantly shudderings shook the stony crowd ;
Some rigid arms with writhing spasms were lifted.
Some dungeon- throats with frenzy-spasms rifted

By hideous strangled voices shrieking loud :

Abominable Fate,

We hurl thee back thy hate !

The Doom of a City. 123

The poison and the wine —
Our sins and souls are thine !
Ah ! pangs of utter death
Stifle our breath —
Hear us ; we plead ; hear us ; oh, wait ! "

No answer came save trumpet-voices blaring
Death and destruction as in furious fray ;
And while those forms gasped out their cry despairing
They sank down crumbling into dusty spray.
Then, as the trumpet clamours died away.
Did crash on crash in clear succession sound,
Like lingering peals of thunder ; each the knell
Of house or column falling to the ground
In sudden ruin, as those statues fell.

And next, as if the solid hills were all

Disseated now to glide tremendously

Over the town and plunge athwart the sea,

A mass of gloom enveloped in its pall

Temple and palace, basement dome and spire ;

Then o'er the marble crowd submerging came :

Its black oppression burned throughout my frame,

A torture of intolerable fire.

Yet when at length its ponderous bulk was rolled

Over the shrinking waters out of sight,

124 ^^^ Doom of a City.

The City and the steadfast statues white
Stood all unchanged about me ; but, behold,
The uttered condemnation had been wrought
Upon the ruined fragments, — they were naught.

IV.

That cloud-consuming fire still held the sky,
Blotting its worlds out wholly ; while the sphere
Seemed listening breathless in an awful fear.

Till that great Voice again rang forth on high :

"When now the sapless tree bears bloom nor

FRUIT,

Why linger trunk and root?
Let it be hewn away and fire-destroyed ;

And in its place left void
A living tree be set to spread and rise,
Responsive to the bounty of the skies."

The sentence smote some statues like a sword ;
With nerveless gestures pitiful to see
They moaned their helpless hopeless litany,

" We lived, we lived, O great and dreadful Lord ! '*

Then as they crumbled into dust away,

The Answer speeded from the hills behind, —

A noise of rushing like a mighty wind :

The Doom of a City, 125

The ashen fire-flood in a tempest grey
Hissed through the City and the wan array ;
And hurrying o'er the sea, as if its might
With grim joy hasted to fulfil such trust,
Swept all the human and palatial dust
To irretrievable Chaos, Death and Night.

And when that deadly storm of fire was past,
A Voice came roaring like its final blast :

" Whose virtue cannot pay their Life's expense,

Whose souls are lost in sense.
They are no more; themselves with God have
willed, —

Their iEON is fulfilled."

V.

Once more that fire possessing sole the sky.
Once more deep silence o'er the lessened throng
Of waiting statues ; and it lasted long

Ere that great Voice again pealed forth on high :

" When he who had a Palace and its power.

Well-favoured for his dower.
Has proved unjust and proud, has spent its trea-
sures

On selfish pomps and pleasures ;

126 The Doom of a City,

He must descend from his exalted place :

Yet, if in deep disgrace
He do not sink still deeper, till his breath

Be wholly quenched in death ;
But learn to build again his kingly heart.
The throne awaits him and the kingly part."

Ah ! what a multitude of statues then
Were shaken by the thunder of this doom ! —
" O Lord ! all perish if Thou wilt consume

In justice ! Lord have mercy on frail men ! "

Ev'n as the crash of smitten structures roared

The answering Judgment-terrors filled the sky :

Inexorably swift it streamed and poured

A red-fire deluge from that cloud on high,

Which drowned the City and the multitude,

Devouring all the space from hills to sea.

Hissing and roaring the resistless flood

Plunged through the trembling earth, in haste to flee

With its vast ravage ; and the earth gaped wide

To swallow in that cup of wrath amain.

Then gnashed her seared and riven jaws to hide

What shook her yet with shuddering throbs of pain.

How many had become the torrent's prey,

Swept down abrupt into some lower sphere !

But of the rest — can vision cheat me here ?

The Doom of a City. 127

What forms are these amidst the wan array

Of human marble ? Strange new stony forms —

These serpents, panthers, wolves, these apes and swine,

Vultures and hawks and owls, with sheep and kine, .

And many others, brutes and birds and worms,

Couched in unutterably piteous rest.

The sorcery of that Judgment-fire attest.

VL

No more wild agonies shook the steadfast Earth :
That night of cloud, unable to sustain
Its soul of fire, was withering ; when again

Upon the silence that great Voice flowed forth :

" When he who should have travelled all the

DAY,

Has lingered on his way
to sport with idlers ; or in common fear

Of LONE PATHS STEEP AND DREAR,
Has TURNED ASIDE TO PACE DOWN CROWDED ROADS

Of rich and gay abodes ;
He must plod this day's journey on the morrow

With weary rue and sorrow.
Ere he can win his happy home, and greet

The dear friends waiting for his laggard feet."

Whereunto statue-voices low implored :
" Free human fellowship is very sweet 3

128 The Doom of a City.

Bitter with our own kind as foes to meet —
Heavy the load of uncompanioned life !
Alas, we are so weary-sick of strife !
Grant us awhile Thy perfect peace, O Lord ! "

The humble plaining of that saddest prayer,

Relapsing into stony silentness,

So filled my heart that I was unaware

Until surrounded by its sway and stress,

How the deep Ocean rushing from its lair

Bellowed against the hillslopes planted broad ;

While fierce from sea-vast cloudglooms in the air,

Blazoned with dreadful sentences of God

In writhed and quivering lightnings wrought, the rain

Intense of swerveless thunderbolts streamed down.

Crashing amidst the ruins of the town,

And shrieking through the loud inundant main.

VII.

The flood below, the flood above ebbed soon
Completely ; fair and still the green earth lay.
Beneath a heaven surcharged with tenfold day.
More holy-sweet of lustre than the moon.
I gazed : the statues stood there as before.
Like dateless boulders by the old sea-shore :
But of the City's vast palatial pride
Of all the works of Man on every side —

The Doom of a City. 129

The theatre's stupendous cirque of tiers,

The pharos and the galleons and the piers,

Remained no vestige ; save that here and there,

Bathed in the sea of crystal-lucent air,

Some fragment wall, some column cleft stood dim,

More like strange rocks than structures reared by Him.

Had that swift deluge been the stream of Time,

And every billow some vast age sublime.

Over the vacant City flowing ever

Until a mind should swoon in the endeavour

Such infinite cycles of its course to mete.

Erasure had been scarcely more complete.

vni.

The cloud was vanished from the perfect sky ;
Heaven earth and sea all floated from my sight.
Bathed in a dimness of exceeding light

Too pure, intense, and calm for mortal eye.

And yet I saw as we may see in trance, —
Saw how a gradual change beatified
The statues who had never yet replied

When those dread Judgments took dread utterance.

As Memnon woke to music with the dawn.

They in the solemn splendour seemed to rouse

I

130 The Doom of a City.

From death to life, with glory on their brows ;
A calm grand life, eyes shut and breath undrawn.

The crystal sea of sky then streamed Away,

The inmost Heavens revealed themselves abroad :
A Throne . . . the Vision of the Living God . . .

Ravished and blind upon the earth I lay.

Once more a Voice descended vast and lone,
The Voice of Infinite Love Omnipotent ;
Sweeter than life or death, it swelled and blent

The Universe all tuned into one tone :

" The soldier who has fought the noble fight,

Persistent for the right,
Enduring all and daring all to prove

His glad unpurchased love
And faithfulness, in triumph and defeat-:

What doom for him is meet ?

The Battle, with the day it filled, is done ;

The field is lost or won :
Let Night then greet him well with joy and rest

By holy visions blest ;
That on the Morrow he may rise up strong

Hopeful and fresh and young,

The Doom of a City, 131

His sharp wounds healed, to do and dare once more

Heroic as before, —
But with a loftier rank, with nobler power,

With far more generous dower.
And so for ever through the Nights and Days
While he remaineth lord of his own praise.
He may go on, exalted more and more.
Till final triumph crown the fateful war ;
Till Love and Life and Bliss (which once was

Faith)
Have vanquished wholly Evil, Falsehood, Death ;
The loftiest station that his soul can fill.
The utmost sway commensurate with his will,
The All of Wisdom that he can believe.
Of I^ove and Goodness that he can receive.
Are then his dower from the reachless Throne
And Him who reigns eternally thereon."

IX.

I heard it all, — there prostrate on the ground ;

I floated in the Voice as in a sea,

Or as a cloud may float dissolvingly
Within the sapphire noontide's burning bound

And when it ebbed it left my shrinking soul
To shudder back into its cave of clay,

s^2 The Doom of a City.

Blind, hopeless, one dead atom fallen astray
From vital union in and with the Whole.

After a time, from such fierce consciousness
Of personal being as is lunacy —
As not to know is perfectly to be —

I was withdrawn by human utterances :

" O Lord ! let us be hidden, let us die !

Thy love and wisdom are too infinite !

We throb unpeaceful in Thy perfect light,
Star-specks of gloom no Sun can glorify.

" Were we less dark than our old midnight sphere.
Transplant us not into Thy blinding day.
Lord, we adore Thee, Perfect, Sole, for aye —

Our sins and weakness crush our spirits here ! "

X.

No answer sounded. I arose and stood.
The gates of Heaven were shut, the Vision gone
But still undimmed miraculously shone

That tenfold noon of glareless sanctitude.

They stood — the Spirits who had conquered life ;

Erect, yet pleading, hands* uplifted, there;

Glorious — ^yet wan with that divine despau: :
Was this the crowning issue of the strife ?

The Doom of a City. 133

The noble faces slowly turned to where
The dim hills floated, exquisitely drawn
Or interfused, like breathless streaks of dawn,

Upon the breathless ocean of wide air.

Thereon uplifted stood a lofty band ;

Some burning with the glory of their wings ;

Some golden-crowned and purple-robed like Kings ;
Some clad in white, a palm-branch in the hand ;

Some like stern warriors armed with shield and sword ;
Some swaying crystal cups in which the fire
Of red wine quivered ; while a radiant quire

Striking their harps sang loud with sweet accord.

XL

" Dear Friends, come ! we wait for you ;
Strong and wise and pure and true.
Why, alas, ascend so few ?

" Where are the myriads that should now be here ?

How have they wasted all the lavish dower
With which God fitted them to rule their sphere —

The Passion and the Vision and the Power ?
For ever hoping, disappointed ever,

We know too well the constant tragic doom :

134 y^^ Doom of a City.

Vision hath seen, with scarce a work-endeavour,
Then closed its eyes for more voluptuous gloom ;

Passion hath disenshrined the awful soul.
Its large heart tempting fatal fleshly lusts ;

And Power hath shaken off divine control,
To gorge itself with universal trusts.

." For the undone Many, ruth.
Ye have conquered, true to truth ;
Dare our wine of Joy and Youth.

** The tree whose trunk and branches dark and bare

Withstood the storms of Winter, planted strong ;
Doth glorify itself in summer's air

With leaf and fruit and nested bird's blithe song :
The earth-realm labouring blind and dumb and cheerless,

Yet ever onward, through the reign of night ;
Leaps forth with joy majestically fearless

Into the pure new heaven of morning light.
Again stern Winter with its storms shall come.

But find the tree grown stronger 'gainst its wrath ;
Again the night-gloom, weary, blind and dumb,

But find the realm far forward on its path.

" Then dear Friends, come, come away !
Now is Summer, now is Day.
Joy assumes imperial sway ! "

The Doom of a City. 135

XII.

As when the warm spring-breezes overblow
Some silent, frozen, melancholy main.
Its waters heave and throb and rend their chain,

And singing in the sunbeams flash and flow :

So with the breathing of that gracious song
Those Spirits burst their trance of silent sadness ;
Their bosoms heaved with glorious life and gladness ;

Clear-eyed, erect, full-voiced, advanced their throng :

" O Brothers of this Heaven supreme and glorious !

O Sisters of this greeting full of love !
Into what a dawn of perfect day victorious,

Do ye usher us, and welcome us above 1
The World o'erflows with life serene and tender ;

The air, the light is all celestial wine ;
Our inmost soul is interfused with splendour

And harmony divine !

" As birds the boundless azure sky-deep winging,
As breezes flowing round and round the earth.

As flowers into the vernal welcome springing,
As fountains leaping seaward bright with mirth ;

Our thoughts throughout Infinity float chainless.
Our souls encompass spheres of life sublime.

13^ The' Doom of a City,

Our beings thrill and glow with new life stainless,
Our swift joy laughs at Time !

" The worlds go wheeling far their cycled courses, —

From the fathomless Unbirth of the Abyss,
By golden laws attuning counter-forces

Built up into the noonday Heaven of Bliss :
And pervading all, sustaining all, enwreathing

With Its infinite embrace beneath, above,
The -^ther — the Divine eternal breathing

Of Life and Light and Love ! "

XIIL

So singing they advanced with measured pace ;
And like a silver morning-mist were drawn
Slow floating up the hillside wood and lawn.

Unto that high seraphical embrace.

All stood triumphant, beautiful, divine,

Between the heaven and earth ; all stood there bright;

Informed, transfigured with the holy light
As crystal cups with sacramental wine.

I would have stood there evermore and gazed
Entranced in adoration, consciousless.
Upon that beauty of all holiness

In human forms embodied and upraised.

The Doom of a City. 137

Alas ! the universal light too soon

Was fading, flowing backward to its fount,
Until they stood upon that sombre mount

Sole-shining o'er the dark earth as a moon.

And still the glory-stream flowed back to God ;

And they with it were floated up the sky ;

Whose gates shut blank against my straining eye,
And left the earth a dark and soulless clod —

Left all the earth like some most desolate shore
Wherefrom has ebbed the free and living tide ;
And left me stranded on its dark waste wide,

A wreck to be recovered nevermore.

O Life ! this is thy deepest woe of all —
That as a soul regains its heaven of birth,
The body drags it swooning back to earth,

Stunned, hopeless, blind with its tremendous fall.

XIV.

When I arose the ever ancient Night

Filled with his sombre pomp the earth and sky
No memories of that doom of dire affright
Perturbed the calm ; and undismayed on high

138 .The Doom of a City.

The moon and stars where they had shone before
Shone on in cold and stern sublimity.
The hills loomed dark upon the silent shore,

Round which the waves in thoughtful monotone
Rolled their old voice of Ever — evermore,
A royal City dwelt upon this throne, —

And what now left of all its wealth and pride ?
A few strange groups of pallid-gleaming stone !
But Nature cares not for the ruin wide.

Her dreaming beauty glows in perfect bloom :
Most cold, imperial, unlamenting Bride,
Her Lord and Bridegroom scarcely in the tomb. . . .

The moon sank slowly down from heaven's crest ;
Pale radiance lined and flecked the eastern gloom ;
A stir, a breathing thrilled the world's deep rest ;

No wakening bird, half-wakened, here and there
Uttered uncertain warning from its nest ;
But spread a cold and fresh and fragrant air.

That seemed with lifeful breath to cleanse away
The grosser shades and vapours everywhere,
And all memorials of the night's dismay,

That pure and odorous the earth might greet
The first divine embraces of the Day,
Now hurrying up the heavens with fiery feet,

The crown of burning gold upon his head,
Cloud-robed with gold and purple, light and heat . . .

The Doom of a City. 139

Ages on ages in their course have shed

Ruin of fire and tempest on the earth,
Uncounted seons of her sons are dead ;
Yet she exults with aboriginal mirth,

Nor feels her frame grow weak, her blood grow cold,
But pure and strong and young as at her birth
When first God^s hand her glorious path outrolled :

For day by day He seals her with His sign —
Night's tomb is rent, the gates of heaven unfold
To let the ever-youngest Dawn divine,

Bathe her in balms of sempiternal youth.
I think no human soul which here doth pine
In personal anguish and with general ruth,

Without these Dawn-evangels fresh from God
Could feel its immortality a truth.
Dear are all dawns ; but this that coming trod

The eastern heavens to kiss the earth's pale brow
With heavenly benedictions, when the rod
Of the Avenging Justice was but now

Withdrawn from penal smitings dire ! — what speech
That mortals use, what words of lofty vow
Or soaring chant can emulate and reach

The awe, the bliss, the gratitude, the love,

That saving dawn brought with it from above ?

140 The Doom of a City.

XV.

What a dawn ascendeth fair through the pure and silent
air,
Fain to greet with holy rapture what a glorious virgin
Earth!
From her sins and fears and woes, from her memories,
by the throes
Of a fierce regeneration born anew in perfect birth !
But what forms, what forms are they, there between the
. sea-loved bay
And the spiritual hills with the woods that clothe their
feet;
Human forms erect in power, beasts that crouch and
birds that cower.
But all wrought in fadeless marble, white and shining,
pure and sweet ?
Lo ! as ever more and more broadening out the dawn
doth soar,
Kindling emerald purple golden quivering splendours
round her way ;
What a flush — as if of Life kindling with triumphant strife
Through the torpid marble — fires them, though they
all so steadfast stay !
Lo ! as ever more and more music with the dawn doth
soar.

The Doom of a City, 141

Breezes whisper, leaflets murmur, waters warble joy
for day ;
What a thrill — ^as if of Life stirring with triumphant strife
Through the rigid marble — heaves them, though they all
so silent stay !
These are forms that couch and stand, still as marble
fountains grand.
Still in meek victorious patience, till the Sea of Life
arise ;
Till the World-sustaining Sea, Soul of all Eternity,
Once more fill them with Its waters of the Life that
never dies.
When the Royal Sun shall leap glorious on yon eastern
steep,
Gazing grand athwart this province of his measureless
domains ;
Straightway at that conquering sign, straightway at that
glance divine,
Soul shall fill them, stone encarnate, life-blood gush
through all their veins.
And this Nature which doth dream in Titanic sloth
supreme.
Hill and river, wood and meadow, heaven of azure,
careless sea,
Shall have all its want fulfilled, strength employed and
bosom thrilled

14'i The Doom of a City^

By a lordly domination — soul and thought and passion
free.
Oh, that these who in this hour shall attain such solemn
dower,

Consecrated Lords and Bridegrooms wedding this fair
virgin Earth,
Have such holy strength of will, love faith truth un-
quenchable,

Wisdom, justice, making concord of inheritance and
worth.

As shall give a nobler being from the blissful marriage
birth!

XVI.

As one who in the morning-shine

Reels homeward, shameful, wan, adust,
From orgies wild with fiery wine

And reckless sin and brutish lust :
And sees a doorway open wide,

And then the grand Cathedral space ;
And hurries in to crouch and hide

His trembling frame, his branded face.

The organ-thunders surge and roll

And thrill the heights of branching stone ;

They shake his mind, they crush his soul
His heart knells to them with a moan :

The Doom of a City, 143

He heaxs the voice of holy prayer,
The chanting of the fervent hymn ;

They pierce his depths of sick despair,
He trembles more, his eyes are dim.

He sees the world-wide morning flame

Through windows where in glory shine
The saints who fought and overcame.

The martyrs who made death divine :
He sees pure women bent in prayer,

Communing low with God above : —
Too pure ! what right has he to share

Their silent feast of sacred love ?

How can he join the songs of praise ?

His throat is parched, his brain is wild :
How dare he seek the Father^s gaze,

Thus hopeless, loveless, and defiled ?
How taint the pureness — though he yearn

To join such fellowship for aye ? . . .
He creeps out pale — May he return

Some time when he shall dare to stay !

As he within that holy fane,

Was I upon that solemn shore ;
One murky cloud, one spoiling stain.

One jarring note, — all these and more :

144 ^^^ Doom of a City.

A Spectre from the wicked Past,
Familiar with the buried years ;

The joys that fade, the griefs that last,
The baffled hopes, the constant fears ;

The fair, fair dawn of many a day

That sinks in storm-clouds red and wild ;
The souls that in their huts of clay

Are crushed and buried, all defiled ;
The Lusts that rage like savage steeds.

While Will with reinless hand sleeps on.
And drunken Thought but goads their speeds.

Then one mad plunge, and all is gone ;

The Moods that strew palm-branches now

And with Hosannas fill the sky.
Then shortly crown with thorns the brow

And mock and scourge and crucify ;
The error, guile and infamy.

The waste of foul and bloody strife.
The unforeseen catastrophe.

That make the doleful drama. Life.

Ah, what had I to do with these
Young lovely souls serene and clear,

Awaking up by fine degrees
To life unsullied as its sphere ?

The Doom of a City. 145

The Spectre that has roamed forlorn,
Sin-restless, through the sombre night ;

Must creep to its old grave at mom,
Nor blot the world of life and light

XVII.

Where I had left it, on the lonely strand.
Uninjured lay my boat, and lovely ; seeming
Some fair sea-creature, of the midsea dreaming

To light foam-whispers on the yellow sand.

While yet we skimmed the wavelets of the bay,
Methought there rose, ev'n as the sun arose,
A vehement Chorus hurrying to its close —

Fresh as the breath of the awakened day.

With vital fires the morning seemed to glow
While it rang onward like a trumpet-blast
Of keen reveille crying : Night is past !

Arouse ye dreamers, to the day and foe !

The stars for ever sweep through space, surrounding
Their sun-kings and God^s central hidden Throne

With splendour and deep music far-resounding.
Though heard by pure celestial ears alone :

Their music chants His lofty praise for ever.

Their splendours bum to Him the Light Divine ;

14^ The Doom of a City.

In their grand uneager motions pausing never,
They live and sing and shine.

Eternally they sweep on their vast courses,

With solemn joy fulfilling His behest ;
While the balance of stupendous counter-forces

Buildeth up a stable Infinite of rest.
And the -^ther, breathing life through vast pulsations,

Thrills with rapture to their God-supported flight ;
And its waves against the rushing constellations

Break in the foam of light.

Each world-sphere groweth grandly through the ages

From its lifeless weltering unsubstantial birth.
Through unnumbered fiery throes and cyclic stages

Till it shines in heaven a life-abounding earth ;
Till its vapours are green fields and glorious oceans,

Till with countless living beings it is rife :
By harmony constraining dread commotions

It is crowned and thronged with life.

Until conscious, doubting, worshipping Immortals,
As they journey on their infinite Life-way,

Passing through its Birth and Death mysterious portals
Inform with spirit-fire the clothing clay :

And the dead, spectral, consciousless Material
Is a dwelling-place for essences divine ;

The Doom of a City, 147

Throbs with thought and passion deathlessly ethereal,
A Heaven-honoured shrine.

All spirits from their infancy's blind sleeping

Must struggle to a strong and noble prime
Through sins, dangers, anguish, terrors, — ever reaping

Costly fruits in every season of swift Time :
From their fountain in its deepest dark foundation.

Glory-shrouded in the shadow of God's Throne,
Through all worlds to their highest soaring station

By unrest all have grown.

Life is only by perpetual on-flowing ;

Torpid rest is the true life-devouring death ;
Through stern struggles all things ever are upgrowing ;

Sighs and moanings prove a vital-throbbing breath.
One alone — Eternal, Infinite, All-holy,

Is in changeless rest ; the Perfect grows nor grew :
Finite souls and all things live by progress solely.

All ar^ but what they do.

( 148 )

PART III.

THE RETURN.

L

Long tranquil days one more than seven
The beamless sun from out the main

Went burning through the vault of Heaven,
And circled to the deep again :

While day by day in dreamful ease

We glided o*er the glistening seas.

Long calm autumnal nights just seven
The moon with all her starry train

Went shining through the vault of Heaven,
And circled to the deep again :

While night by night in dreamful ease

We glided o'er the glimmering seas.

Long days so rich in rest, so still ;
As warm as love, as calm as truth ;

The Doom of a City, 149

Long nights which did those days fulfil,

As some sweet girl a fervent youth :
While day and night in dreamful ease
We floated o'er the silent seas.

Time set within his circled sky

A topaz sun, a diamond moon,
And thick star-pearls, and made thereby

A marriage-ring of blissful boon ;
With which in ever-dreamful ease
We floated o'er the happy seas.

Did Nature sleep, and dream in sleep

Of all the Spring and Summer toil
Her children were about to reap, —

The wealth of corn and wine and oil :
As day and night in dreamful ease
We floated o'er the sleeping seas ?

Or was it her deep^thoughted mood \

A little sad, such loss had been ;
And grieved, the dear Past seemed so good ;

Yet proud, triumphant and serene :
As day and night in dreamful ease
We floated o'er the solemn seas ?

I lay in one long trance of rest
And contemplation, — free from thought

150 The Doom of a City,

Of Future issue, worst or best

To be from Past and Present wrought :
While day and night in dreamful ease
We glided o'er the tranced seas.

11.

Before me, in the drowsy night outspread,
The City whence in anguish I had fled

A vast dark Shadow loomed :

So still, so black, it gloomed,
It seemed the darkness of a great abyss

Gulphed in a desert bare ;

Around whose precipice
Dim lamps burnt yellow in the vacant air.
Lifted on high portentous. Yet to me
Its dark suggestions were of Life, not Death ;
Its awful mass of life oppressed my soul :
The very air appeared no longer free.
But dense and sultry in the close controul
Of such a mighty cloud of human breath.
The shapeless houses and the monstrous ships
Were brooding thunderclouds that could eclipse

The burning sun of day ;
Surcharged with storms of such electric life,
Keen as the lightning to its chosen prey,
Curbless and dreadful when aroused to strife. . .

The Doom of a City, 151

Who once has gazed upon the face of Death
Confounds no more its calm with cahnest Sleep ;
The terror of that beauty shadoweth
His spirit with an influence too deep.

HI.

And while I gazed upon the sleeping City,
And pondered its unnumbered destinies,
A flood of awe and fear and love and pity
Swelled in my heart and overflowed my eyes

With unexpected tears.
The burden of the message I had brought
From that great City far across the sea
Lay heavy on my soul ; as if for years
And years I had been wandering wearily
In travail with it : now the time was spent ;
Now, as a cloud with fire and thunder fraught,
I must give birth with throes of agony,
And perish in the bearing. So I leant
Back in the boat, all desolate and distraught,
Pangs shuddering through the faintness of cold fears :
Death passed his hand across my brow ; but went
To lay its plenary pressure on some heart
That throbbed true life — * for this poor pulse,' thought

He,
* Is not worth quelling ' — I watched him depart

152 The Doom of a City,

Bearing all peace with him ; when suddenly
That Spirit which will never be withstood
Came down and shook and seized and lifted me, —
As men uplift a passive instrument
Through which to breathe whatever fits their mood,
Stately triumphal march or war-note dread,
Anthem, gay dance, or requiem for the dead ;
And through my lips with irrepressible might
Poured forth its own stern language on the night

IV.

** Haughty and wealthy and great, mighty, magnificent,
free.

Empress in thine own right of the earth-surrounding
sea!

Broad and deep flows the river that feedeth thy mighty
heart.

Bringing from all the zones to crowd thine imperial mart

Of all their produce the best — their silks, their gems, their
gold.

Their fruits and corn and wine, their luxuries thousand-
fold :

Thy merchants are palaced princes, thy nobles scorn
great kings,

Thy meanest children swell with pride beneath thy sha-
dowing wings ;

The Doom of a City, 153

And thy voice throughout the world, complacently serene,
Proclaims * Of all my Sisters, I am the rightful Queen !
This one is blind, this deaf, and that other is but a mute ;
This one is fair indeed, but drunken and dissolute ;
This is a very slave, dishonoured long ago ;
This one is dying of age, that other of want and woe ;
This one is proud and great, but a heathen in her soul.
And subject to fatal frenzies, raging beyond control :
But I, I am rich and strong, I am wise and good and free ;
Throned above them, Empress sole of the earth-surround-
ing Sea ! '

" Yes, indeed thy power is great, but thy evil is great
no less.

And thy wealth is poor to pay the debt of thy guiltiness ;

And the world is judged with justice, and thou must
pass through that fire

Which hath tested so sternly the glitter of Venice and
Carthage and Tyre :

For no wealth can bribe away the doom of the Living
God,

No haughtiest strength confront the sway of His chasten-
ing rod.

Repent, reform, or perish I the Ages cry unto thee :

Listen, oh listen, ere yet it be late, thou swarthy Queen
of the Sea !

154 ^^^ Doom of a City.

** Thy heritage vast and rich is ample to clothe and feed
The whole of thy millions of children beyond all real

need;
One of the two main wheels whereon thy Faith doth

move
Is that each as he loves himself so shall he his neighbour

love:
But thy chief social laws seem strictly framed to secure
That one be corruptingly rich, another bitterly poor,
And another just starving to death : thy fanes and man-
sions proud
Are beleaguered with filthy hovels wherein poor wretches

crowd,
Pining in body and soul ; untaught, unfed by those
Who are good if they merely dribble bland alms upon

fatal woes —
Resigning scarcely aught of their pleasure and pride and

content,
Nor dreaming that all their life is one huge embezzlement.

" The sumptuous web of thy trade encompassing all the

globe
Is fretted by gambling greed like a moth-eaten robe,
Is slimed by creeping fraud, is poisoned by falsehood's

breath.
Is less a garment of life than a shroud of rotting death.

The Doom of a City. 155

** The mass of thy rulers live with scarcely one noble
aim,

Scarcely one clear desire for a not inglorious fame ;

Slaves to a prudence base, idolaters unto Might,

Jailers of lofty zeal, infidels to pure Right,

Deaf to the holy voice of the Conscience of the World,

Blind to the banner of God when it floats in the storm
unfurled :

They, and with them the array of thine actual Priest-
hood, thy proud

And numberless Father-confessors, — ^ineffable crowd

Of scribes who by day and by night, unceasingly blatant,
dictate

Thine every move in the contest with Time the Servant
of Fate.

" Thy flaring streets each night affront the patient skies
With an holocaust of woes, sins, lusts and blasphemies ;
When thy thousands of harlots abroad with the other

thousands are met
Of those who made them first and who keep them harlots

yet:
So dreadful, that thou thyself must sometimes look for

the fire
That rained from heaven on Sodom to make thee one

funeral pyre.

156 The Doom of a City.

" Thy Church has long been becoming the Fossil of a

Faith;
The Form of dry bones thou hast, but where are the

blood and breath ?
Dry bones, that seem a whole, with dead sinews binding

the parts,
Inert save when bejuggled to ghastly galvanic starts :
Though thou swearest to thy people, * The King is but

sick, not dead ' —
Gaining the time while you choose you another in His

stead ;
Though thy scribes and thy placemen all, most of whom

know the fact.
Vouchsafe in His name to write, pretend by His will to act :
Where are the signs of His life ? — While living He never

ceased
To thrill with the breath of His being thy realm from the

West to the East ;
While He lived He fought with sin, with fleshly lust and

pride ;
While He lived His poor and mean were wealthy and

dignifled ;
While He lived His reign was freedom, faith, chastity,

peace and love ;
And the symbol borne on his banner was not the raven

but dove ;

The Doom of a City, 157

While He lived there yawned a Hell with a Devil for his

foes,
And a God-ruled Heaven of triumph before his followers

rose ;
While He lived the noblest of men were wholly devoted

to Him,
The saints, the bards, the heroes, in soul and mind and

limb, — L
Who now without a Leader, mournful in silence wait,
Girding each one himself to his lonely fight with Fate.

" But thou, O Queen, art false : a liar, if He is dead

And becoming a mammoth fossil whose aeon is wholly
sped;

A traitor if still He lives and shall for ever reign,

For thou spurnest the laws most sacred of all He doth
ordain,

Should Christ come now from Heaven, to reap the
harvest sown

When He buried Himself in the earth, watered with blood
of His own,

How many Christians indeed could He gather with strict-
est care

From thy two hundred myriads who claim in Him a share?

He agonised to save thee and thy children all ;

And He saveth scarcely enough to delay thy deadly fall.

T58 The Doom of a City.

" For fall thou wilt, thou must — so proud as thy state is

now,
Thou and thy sisters all, scarce better or worse than

thou,
If ye do not all repent, and cleanse each one her heart
From the foulness circling with its blood to poison every

part
Woe to thy pampered rich in their arrogant selfishness ;
Woe to thy brutelike poor who feel but their bread-
distress;
Woe to thy people who dare not live without hope of

wealth.
Who look but to fruits of the earth for their life and

saving health ;
Woe to thy rulers who rule for the good of themselves

alone.
Fathers who give their children crying for bread a

stone
Woe to thy mighty men whose strength is unused or

sold ;
Thy sages who shut their eyes when Truth is stern to

behold ;
Woe to thy prophets who smile Peace, Peace, when it is

a sword ;
Thy poets who sing their own lusts instead of hymns of

the Lord ;

The Doom of a City, 159

Thy preachers who preach the life of what they feel to

be death ;
Thy sophists who sail wild seas without the compass of

faith ;
Thy traders trading in lies and in human bodies and

souls ;
Thy good men cursing those better who strive on to

loftier goals : — ^

The final Doom evolveth, burdened with woe on woe,
Sure as the justice of God while yet by -His patience slow;
For the earth is pervaded wholly, through densest stone

and clod,
With the burning fire of the law of the Truth of the

Living God ;
Consuming the falsehood,' the evil, the pride, the lust,

the shame,
With ever-burning unrelenting irresistible flame ;
Until all save the purest spirit, eternal, of truth and love.
Be altogether consumed away, beneath as well as above."

1857.

( i6o )

THE DELIVERER.^

I WAS a captive. Massive walls sevenfold
Encompassed all the prison, high and bare ;

The stone, the brass, the iron, the triple gold,
And yet another which we knew not there.

Year after year I wasted there alone ; —

Now quiet, crushed beneath that woe immense ;

Now moaning with a weary changeless moan ;
Now frantic with still-baffled impotence :

And heard at times through all that stony gloom

The idiotic laugh, the piercing cry
Of others ; each within his living tomb

Chained wretched, helpless, impotent as I.

Until one eve, when I felt sick to death,
I found a love-prayer cowering in my heart ;

And clothed it with strong wings of passionate breath.
And sent it thro' the Heavens to plead our part

^ Reprinted by permission from the Fortnightly Review,

The Deliverer. i6i

" O dreacjful Lord, O gracious God, I know

That I and all the other captives here
Have wrought, each for himself, this doom of woe :

Yet Thou, All-merciful, bend down thine ear !

" Alas, alas ! what have we for a plea ?

We are most wretched ; wretched most in this,
That, tho' we strive, we cannot burn to Thee

In love as Thou to us and all that is."

In that same night, when I was fallen asleep

After such agony of yearning prayer,
A voice came gliding through my slumber deep,

A voice, a glow, a waft of vital air.

I woke ; and, raising gloom-attempered eyes,
They blinked at lustre, but no form could see.

The Voice rang singing sweet, " Awake, arise !
And come out hither, and be ever free ! "

I stood — the fetters kept no longer hold ;

I walked straight forward through the dungeon-wall,
And through the others — brass and iron and gold ;

And passing thro' them felt them not at all.

And all the while that Voice sang full and sweet,
" Come forth, come forth, poor captives every one !

1 62 The Deliverer .

Oh, shut not fast your ears when I entreat !

Come forth, and breathe the air and see the sun ! "

I thought myself quite free, when, lo ! I found

An adamantine barrier foil me there :
I could not see, could scarcely feel its bound, —

A wall, a curtain woven of pure air.

What poignant anguish pierced my blissful trance.
Thus baffled at the very verge of Heaven ! —

" Dear Angel of divine deliverance,
Assist me here, for I in vain have striven ! "

Louder and sweeter rang the glorious Voice,
" Has one, then, wakened up to feel my breath ?

All holy spirits in your choirs rejoice ;

Another soul is saved from bonds and death ! "

The Spirit was beside me dazzling bright ;

It burned the way before me through that wall ;
And I was free beneath the heaven of night, ,

Nor felt the barrier I passed thro' at all :

But looking back could see a wall-veil then,
As smooth as glass, opaquely black as jet,

Towering on high beyond my farthest ken ;
But know not by what name to call it yet

The Deliverer, 163

As one who almost swooning drinks of wine,

I drank in deep the universal air
And glorious freedom of the world divine ;

Then fell down worshipping the Splendour there.

It raised me gently as a wounded dove, —
" Revere, but worship not, a fellow soul :

Adore the infinite Wisdom, Truth, and Love,
The life and breath and being of the Whole."

It was compact of such intense pure flame,
That still mine eyes were shut to It, in sooth ;

The ardour from It thrilled through all my frame
Like new and purer blood, new life, new youth.

It kissed my brow with such a ravishment
Of burning bliss that half I swooned away,

And felt my spirit soaring forth unpent
From its dissolving funeral urn of clay.

" Henceforward re-assume thy primal dower !

I bless thee unto perfect liberty
Of holiest faith and love : 'tis in thy power

As thou art now, in heart to ever be.

" On earth's most miry ways shall slip thy feet,
This brow Itself may catch the evil stain ;

164 The Deliverer.

But faith and love can bum thee pure and sweet :
— Farewell, until we may unite again ! "

How did these gracious words beneficent
Fill me with dread and agony ! — I cried,

" Great Spirit, if it be thy blest intent
To save me truly, leave not yet my side !

" Stay with me yet awhile, Deliverer, Thou ! —
I am too weak with chains, too blind with gloom,

For unassisted life ; left lonely now,
I must relapse into that hideous tomb.

" Or at the least, disrobe awhile Thy form
Of its too much effulgence, that' my sight

May meet thy face ; and so thro' every storm
Preserve one Guiding-star, one Beacon-light."

" Because I burn in my pure nakedness.

Thou canst not meet me with thy mortal gaze . .

Thy prayer is granted : a material dress,

A form of shadowing gloom my soul arrays."

Oh bliss ! I saw Her thro' the sevenfold veil \ —

A mighty Seraph shining ruby-clear.
Clothed in majestic wings of golden mail \

A sun within the midnight atmosphere.

The Deliverer, 165

But still her countenance I scarce could scan,

For living glories of the golden hair,
And rapture of the eyes cerulean

As solemn summer heavens burning bare.

Around her head a crystal circlet shone,
Fore-crested with a pure white flying dove :

In emeralds and in sapphires writ thereon,
Athwart the brow, one word was flaming, — Love.

And when she spoke her voice was now so sweet
In soft low music, tremulous with sighs,

That one might dreaming hear his Mother greet
With such a voice his soul to Paradise.

" He is so weak, so weak who should be strong,
Weak as a babe, faint-hearted, almost blind ;

The curse of previous bondage clingeth long :
He must not lapse into that den behind.

" The sun indeed shines ever in the sky :

But when the realm is turned from him to night.

When moon and stars gleam faint and cold on high
Or else are veiled by stormy clouds from sight ;

" The traveller then through field and sombre wood
Finds his own poor dim lamp best guide his feet

1 66 The Deliverer.

The man at home. his household taper good
For useful light, his household fire for heat

" Celestial flowers are set in earthly clay :

However small the circle of a life,
If it be whole it shall expand for aye ;

And all the Heavens are furled in Man and Wife.

" So thou, the man, the circle incomplete,
Shalt find thy other segment and be whole ;

Thy manhood with her womanhood shall meet
And form one perfect self-involving soul.

** Thy love shall grow by feeling day by day
Celestial love, thro* human, blessing thee ;

Thy faith wax firm by witnessing alway
Triumphant faith for ever glad and free.

" By her obedience thy soul shall learn
How far humility transcendeth pride ;

By her pure intuitions shall discern
The fatal flaws of reason unallied.

"Thou shalt see strength in weakness conquering.
The bravest action with the tenderest heart,

Self-sacrifice unconscious hallowing

The lightest playing of the meanest part.

The Deliverer. 167

^* Chastity, purity, and holiness

Shall shame thy virile grossness ; and the power
Of beauty in the spirit and its dress

Reveal all virtue lovely as a flower.

" Till love for her shall teach thee love fojr all ;

Till perfect reverence for her shall grow
To faith in God which nothing can appal,

Tho' His green world be dark with sin and woe.

** Children, by all they are to glad and grieve,
Shall teach thee what a loving Father is.

And how to give is better than receive : —
I bless thee with all household charities.

" A priceless boon ! and, like such boons to men,
A glorious blessing or a fatal curse :

Thou canst not sink back into yon vile den ;
Sinking at all, thou sinkest to a worse."

When thus her words were ended, it might seem
That I was lapsing from a heavenly trance

Into some scarce less blissful earthly dream,
So wonderfully did a change advance.

Her supernatural beauty grew less bright,
Tho' scarce less beautiful ; the fiery name

i68 The Deliverer.

Died out like fire ; the wings of flashing light
Were slowly back-withdrawn into her frame.

The Spirit of the empyrean Heaven

Was incarnated into human birth,
The purest Seraph of the loftiest Seven

Became a maiden of this lower earth.

Yet still she was the same, thus different :

The pinions there, tho' not put forth in power ;

The glory there, tho' in the body pent ; —
Both sheathed thus safely till the fitting hour :

And in her mien, and on her face and brow,
And in her violet eyes, as clear the sign

Of Love supreme and infinite shone now
As when it blazed in jewel-fires divine.

• ••••. •

I woke. A tender hand all silently

Had drawn the curtain and dispersed the gloom ;
The whole triumphant morning in a sea

Of warmth and splendour dazzled thro' the room.

The dearest face, the best-belovM eyes.

Were shining down upon me where I lay ; —

Aglow with love and rapturous surprise,
Seeing my fever was all passed away.

November, 1859.

( i69 )

A FESTIVAL OF LIFE.

** The One remains, the many change and pass ;
Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly ;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass.
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments. . . .'*

Shelley's Adonais,

The wind, in long gusts roaring,
Over the sea-waste hurled with passionate might
The torrent-rush of ponderous rain down-pouring
Through that unbounded darkness of wild night. . .
I gazed into the tumult ; seeing naught ;
But mastered by it into solemn thought,
Such as can seldom brood in garish day, —

Whose myriad sounds and forms and hues

Their sparkling sensual wine infuse,
Till the soul drowses in its drunken clay.
Night scorns to pamper fleshly ears and eyes
With earth's poor store of fleeting luxuries.

Appealing to the Soul alone

In its stupendous Monotone,
Austerely murmuring spells of timeless mysteries.

170 A Festival of Life.

Long sightlessly outgazing

I stood, when through the cloven dark, behold,

A dome of purest crystal lifted, blazing

With living splendours — purple, jasper, gold,

And crowning all, serenely arched on high, ,

A solemn depth of sapphire like a sky.

Far-piercing tremulous lines of watery light
And sheeted lustres wild and riven,
Like sunset glories tempest-driven,

It pours against the streaming gloom of night.

Sustaining this aerial canopy

White marble columns gleam unsteadfastly ;
Yet by its hovering poise in air,
It seems self-borne to revel there.

Surmounting furious blasts over the lurid sea.

I stand by it envaulted. . . .
The palace thrills throughout from dome to floor
In swells of jubilant harmony, exalted
By the storm's intermittent clash and roar :
How the full volumes of orchestral sound
Outsurge continuously and sweep around !
As clouds by winds, see, swayed by their sweet measure,
All floating, gliding, sinking, heaving,
The countless Masquers interweaving
An Iris-coloured maze of dizzy pleasure

A Festival of Life. 171

About the sea-like floor of marble green,

All waved with multitudinous waves, whose sheen

And restless shades the vision cheats ;

They seem to flow beneath the feet
Which thrid that graceful dance of festive life serene.

Around the shorelike border,
Opening to arched recess and far aisle dim,
The feast-spread tables range in stately order.
What golden bowls, a-tremble to the brim.
Beneath the lamps in constellations shine
With jewels and the jewel-gleams of wine !
What fruits are clustered into glorious piles

Throughout the feast's magnificence,

On whose uncumbered affluence
Flowers shed the grace of their ethereal smiles !
Round the broad tables sumptuous couches flow,
Soft as June clouds, suffused with many a glow,

Of crimson, amber, violet dark :

Deep-dyed from each recesses' arc
The massy curtains fall, down-sweeping full and low.

And children sport there tameless. . . .
O happy, happy children ! happier far.
Possessed by unsought joyance free and aimless,
Than those tall masks with laboured pleasures are.

17^ A Festival of Life,

Through feast and dance they flit with shining faces,
Wreathing, unwreathing, in capricious chases,
With ringing laughters at their own swift wiles.

And yet a few, of strange grave mood,

Pace in shadowy solitude
Those many-columned labyrinthine aisles,
Which, opening through the oriels, link to zone
The gem-bright feast with dark grey caverned stone :

Though scarcely man or woman dares

That dusk instinct with lightning-glares,
Down whose far desert vistas waves and tempest moan.

The dome*s broad-soarjng lustres
Are poised upon one massive coil of gold ;
A ruby-crested serpent, starred with clusters
Of flashing gems ; its mighty bulk outroUed
In cyclic rest for ever ; while, consumed,
The End in the Beginning lies entombed :
Gorgeous the symbol of Eternity !

The grand pilastered sweep of wall'

Lives and glows around the hall.
Divinely pictured ; earth and sea and sky
Have yielded the best grandeurs and delights
Of all their rolling seasons, days and nights.

To make these fields of space expand

Into an infinite Wonder-land
By their infinitude of dream-surpassing sights.

A Festival of Life. 173

Sculptures serenely gracious
From out the flowing draperies' regal dyes,
Around the banquet-circle cool and spacious,
Gleam half-revealed to my enchanted eyes.
How can the festival flow undelayed
Amidst the heavenly visions here displayed ?
How is it not rapt still, in breathless trance ? —
What scenes of rock, field, sky and sea,
Flung round in infinite harmony ! —
That wood where uncouth creatures sport and dance
In the weird dimness streaked with silvern rays :
That Eden quivering in the noontide blaze,

Nymphs languid in its fountain-bowers :
That sea-built City's domes and towers
Consuming in the Sunset's slow-breathed fiery haze !

" Evohe ! our high Palace !
We dance, we dance, with dance- exulting feet !
We grow immortal, draining bowl and chalice
Of this life-burning wine-blood nectar-sweet.
And banqueting on this ambrosial food !
While ever and anon, in rapturous mood
Outstealing from the revel, pair by pair

Hide far within some dim recess.

And, faint with fervid eagerness,
Unlock the wildering wealth of love they share !

174 ^ Festival of Life.

What though black Night inspheres us, — storm and rain
Assaulting this fair Heaven with fury vain ?

Our music-storm poured strong and fast

Can balance well the outer blast,
And yon resplendent dome for evermore sustain ! "

With clash of wine-cups ringing,
So rose from flower-crowned feasters swaying there
The fervent Paean, swelled with choral singing
By many a gallant Knight and lady fair.
What strength of wisdom and sure self-reliance
Could make ^/i^se bold to fling such gay defiance
To all the dreadful Powers of ancient Night ? —

T/iese — pigmies swarming in the deep

Beneath their own dome's burning sweep ;
T/iese — motes invisible beneath Heaven's height !
But ere was ended the impetuous song,
A tremor ran electric through the throng :

With pallid cheek and restless eye.

With urgent voices loud and high,
Fear made them more and more the vauntful strains

prolong.

" Ha ! what a burst of thunder !
How the swift lightnings blanched our splendours pale !
Reweave the links of dance, too long asunder !
Let loose again the music's lifeful gale ! . . .

A Festival of Life. 175

But who are these, this never-bidden Pair,
Unnoticed while our joy-song dimmed the air ?
Who are these masked in such mysterious wise ?

What twain of all our company

Are missing from the revelry ? —
They have assumed this melancholy guise
To shed fantastic wildness on our sport.
All here ! — ^then who are Ye, not of our court ?

Whence come ye ? wherefore thus invade

Our blissful brightness with the shade
Of sombre masks and robes, and joy-contemning port ? ''

Silent and dark and solemn, —
While the mixed tumult of amazement died
In deep hushed awe, — firm-planted as the column
Of dusky-splendid porphyry at their side.
The Strangers stood, absorbing all the scene
With slow calm eyes and wonder-baffling mien ;
Two awful Spirits of the outer Night !

For age-like moments that ensued

The Saturnalian multitude
Was frozen into marble undelight ;
Continued numb with terror, — ^lost and drowned
In that weird breathless agony profound,

Like a Nightmare's stifling pain

Crushing, maddening heart and brain.
When utter, monstrous Silence yawns like death around.

I J 6 A Festival of Life,

Till life, resurgent, tingled

In burning blood through every shrunken vein ;

And one deep panting from all breasts commingled

To mark remission of that deadly strain

And over tension of the subtle strings

Whose music is the life of living things. . . .

Again with joy and power from secret caves

The full dance-harmonies outstreaming
Woke the Masquers from their dreaming,

Again they floated on the buoyant waves.

And all, it seemed, with fiercer yearning thirst,

Triumphant o'er the pallid swoon now burst.
Seized the fiery cup of bliss
Mantling high to greet their kiss ;

And in delirious draughts awe doubt and fear immerst.

The dim voluptuous languor
Of clouds surcharged with perfumes, slow and dense
UproUed from precious burnings, veiled the clangour,
The harmonized confusion grown intense,
Reckless, and surging with a wild desire
Most keenly hungered when most fed, like fire ;
— Veiled the vast revel, even from their seeing,

Whose Bacchic frenzy broken loose

Was now the element profuse
That breathed it into such portentous being.

A Festival of Life. 177

And few of all involved in this rich screen
Saw now the Strangers of mysterious mien ;
Whose dark intolerable eyes
Bumed through the tumult and disguise,
Commanding like Omniscience all the wildered scene.

But power to me was given
To see, to pierce the gloomy robes austere.
Which (as our world's gross night hides Hell and

Heaven,
From mortals sick with longing, wild with fear)
Concealed these Two in undistinguished shade.
I saw the Vision of a Queen, arrayed
In midnight purple laced with snowy cloud.
Which as her bosom heaved shone far
With purest jewels, star on star. . . .
Grand Queen ; dread Pythoness : her tall form bowed :
Transcendent beauty lost in desolate grace :
Her long dark hair thrown down about a face
So pale with awful mysteries
Of perfect love and woe and bliss,
That my own heart grew wild panting for her embrace.

But, Heaven be our protection
Against the Demon standing at Her side 1 —
By what dread lunacies of blind affection,
Or monstrous Destiny to Her allied !

M

178 A Festival of Life.

Infernal Horror ! — His rent forehead crowned

With hideous snakes writhing and interwound,

A many crested coil distinguishless ;

While through black cloud with red fire seared
His vast and fleshless frame appeared

Momently shuddering into Nothingness.

On His disfeatured face was stamped a grin

Of unimagined foulness, hate and sin,

Anguish, greed, and rage and scorn,
And fiendish triumph most forlorn. . . .

Thus stood They side by side amidst the festal din.

Wilder and ever wilder
The revel surged beneath its glowing dome ;
And still the outside rage grew ever wilder,
As if all powers that have in Night their home,
Lightning and thunder, rain and stormy blast,
Held their wild revel in its sightless vast . . .
Then those Two Shapes were moved from stony rest ;
And, keeping still their sable shroud.
Moved forward mingling with the crowd ;
Each with a strange keen eagerness represt.
He seized an aged yet carousing Knight ;
She kissed a young girl's forehead drooping white ;
These dancing linked in languid grace.
Those hurrying forth with swerveless pace.

A Festival of Life. 179

Soon through a curtained portal passed from out our
sight

There rose shrill lamentation
From revellers fixed awaiting their return ;
Inexplicable grief and consternation
Possessed them, — dread yet keen desire to learn
The fate of those led forth so suddenly ;
And tremulous murmurings spread. . . . Then all

might see
Those Shapes mysterious coming back alone. . . .

The Silence gave one reckless shout,

" The Knight was old and wearied out,
The Maid was sick and faint some hours agone :
These have but ushered them to rest and peace.
In sooth full kindly — But why therefore cease

The banquet and the dance ? Away !

Every moment of delay
Is squandered from our joy^s brief unretuming lease."

The rude spell fearless-hearted
Swayed back the riant feast-joy^s ebbing flood :
But one — the Lover of the girl departed —
Approached the Woman desperately, and sued
With passion such as will not be denied
For reunition with his promised bride.

1 8o A Festival of Life.

She led him forth in Her divine embrace ;

And then returned without the boy,

Inspired by some exalted joy,
Which shone with holy splendour in Her face,
And bounded in Her port and heaved Her breast . . .
But of the remnant every one represt

In silence of uneasy thought

The wonder that within him wrought :
The mystery had power to awe down open quest

Thenceforth a voice of wailing,
Of grief that spurned all comfort, still increast.
For dear ones lost for ever, countervailing
The shouted songs and laughters of the feast ;
Whose wine ran like a mountain rill, which grows
In strong and swift abundance as it flows.
For the dread Strangers thinned the joyous rout ;

With stern and Fateful ministry

Removing almost momently
Man, woman, child, youth, maid, — selected out
By some inscrutable and lawless law.
Many to Her went willingly, I saw ;

And fascinated by the bliss

Of Her tender, holy kiss.
Welcomed with solemn joy their doom's mysterious
awe.

A Festival of Life. iSi

But it was shameful, fearful,
To mark of those He gestured to His side
How many shtank, with ravings wildly tearful
Of idiot pleas ; while stalwart feastmen cried
" Grant us but one more hour of wine-fired glee !
Others may fail ; but we, lacchus ! we
Could mount high revels with the mounting sun."
A few with high-wrought calmness grand
Took His stretched imperious hand.
And seemed, though then all powerless and undone,
To cope with His Omnipotence of Fate,
Yielding at once with undissembled hate.

But trembling wretches clustered near.
Already summoned forth by Fear
To time-destroying pangs no doom could aggravate.

O infinite tempest raging !
O awful Visitants from Heaven and Hell !
These mortals scorn and mock your dark presaging,
And wreak high feast-strains on their own deep knell.
See, through the clouds of incense wildly glancing.
What Moenads with wild cries are wildly dancing I
All masks off-torn, their white limbs flash and shine.

Flung out tossing through the whirls ;

Dishevelled tresses, wanton curls,
A-flame with flowers and dripping crimson wine,

1 82 A Festival of Life,

Brush naked bosoms with their fiery trace, —
White, perfect breasts, full-swelled to the embrace

Which those wild eyes of humid light

Fiercely passionate now invite : —
The Palace, through their whirlwind, seems to reel in space.

Alas, how sad and dreary
Waned the whole scene there as the Night grew late !
When many of the Masquers, sick and weary,
Lay longing that those Ministers of Fate
Would choose them for removal : when of all
Whom They had taken from the festival
No one returned ; though mourners fiercely craved

The never answering Shapes of Black

To bring them, but a moment, back.
And on the threshold of the Night-storm waved
Their feeble torches, quenched as soon as lit,
Seeking lost darlings through the Infinite :

And when at times some dreadful ghost.

Imaging the loved and lost.
Would through the startled feast with bodeful gestures
flit . . .

The lamps were quickly failing ;
The pictures were weird shadows on the wall ;
In the grey stone-cold dawn-gleams unprevailing
The draperies seemed a vast funereal pall

A Festival of Life. 183

Flapping about the corpselike sculptures wan :
The floor, the cupola which glimmering shone,
The rain-dark marbles, in the tempest thrilled :
Where late the noble feast was spread
Lay scattered flower-blooms dim and dead,
'Mid stains of sullen-oozing wine outspilled
From urns and goblets shattered and overthrown,
And fragments in a sick confusion strown ;
And lost in all the ghastly waste.
On couches tottering and displaced.
Flushed victims of the orgy, helpless, senseless, prone.

Yet evermore those Strangers
Went gathering in their harvest ; and no less.
As men who face to face with deadly dangers
Inebriate their terror and distress,
A few kept up the revel with a madness
Of reeling, shrieking glee which was not gladness.
Till — portents of the near approaching Doom —
Waitings, laughters, wild and fierce,
Through the storm- swung darkness pierce,
And spectres people the dull flickering gloonL . . .
A deep foreboding hush pervades the place :
To that dis-covered Twain in one wild race
All reel along the quaking floor :
There grows a mighty booming roar,
As I am rapt away into the outer space.

184 A Festival of Life.

With storm and fire and thunder
These rearward billows of Night's Ocean dash
Against the Palace : it is rent asunder,
Rent, shattered, with an instantaneous crash.
On, undelayed, exultingly they sweep.
Whirling its fragments through their wild waste deep :
Precipitant in their stupendous sway

The glowing fragments crystalline.

Gold, jewels, precious marbles, shine
Like showering meteors ; high and far away.
Portentous, the Snake's blazing wheel is borne,
In dalliance with the lightnings whose fierce scorn

Smites into view wan wailing shades . . .

The whole Night-Chaos hurrying fades
Over the livid sea, before the dismal morn.

" O utter desolation !
O blighted beauty, splendour, triumph, bliss !
Alas, the gay and thoughtless congregation
Flung out unsheltered to the dark Abyss !
Bright Vision faded ! never more can shine
A joy-insphering Palace so divine."
Lamenting thus, I sank in sleep or swoon. . . .

I wake— The isle and ocean spread

Level and bare : but overhead
The solemn Heaven of sapphire-burning noon

A Festival of Life. 185

Has bent its dome's immeasurable height ;
A few calm clouds o'erfraught with living light

Melt in the quivering crystalline ;

Beneath the Eternal Sun divine,
Insphering half the world in glory and delight

This is the Vision solely,
Trancing all aspiration with content !
Beauty all-perfect, blessedness all-holy.
Are veiled beyond that crystal firmament
The breathless concave yearneth to the Hymn
Of all the Hosts of Stars and Seraphim;
The Hallelujah's raptured Monotone,

To whose vast swell the woiid-strewn Sea

Of ^ther throbs eternally.
Circling the footstool of that nameless Throne
Whose veil's far shadow floods this noon with light. . .
— O self-sequestered Earth ! O gross, weak sight !

For which beneath such heavenly day

Yawneth fathomless for aye
A spectre-haunted gulf of Sphere-completing Night.

February^ 1857.

( i86 )

TASSO TO LEONORA:

FROM HIS DUNGEON ; IN MISERY AND DISTRACTION.

** Ha ! thy frozen pulses flutter
With a love thou dar*st not utter. . . .
Lady, whose imperial brow
Is endiademed with woe !

All the wide world beside us
Show like multitudinous
Puppets passing from a scene ;
"What but mockery can they mean ? "

Shelley — Misery ; a Fragment,

Noblest Lady, throned above
All my soaring hopes of love ;
Could you read my fate's dark truth,
You would give me scomless ruth.

Dawn by dawn I wake to say, —
I will drive all thought away
Of Her I cannot hope to win ;
Vain regret is coward sin.

Tasso to Leonora. 187

Yet each night I yearn to be
Wandering far alone with thee,
Through still Dreamland's dimmest grove
Moonlit by thy heavenly love.

Ah, the long days dark and cold !
life, bereft of thee, unsouled —
Save for Memory ! — crawls on slow.
One sick swoon of barren woe.

Ah, the long nights dreadly still !
When sleep flies my frantic will ;
When through filmy dreams its sting
Consciousness darts quivering.

But when rich Sleep's nectar'd balm
Bathes my weary heart in calm ;
Life, Strength, Joy are all re-found,
With thy pure love glory-crowned.

Thus thou hast my soul unsphered ;
Waking life is dead and weird ;
Deathlike trance is life : — ah me !
All our being seems to be
Interfused with mockery.

Yes — as Love is truer far
Than all other things 3 so are

i88 Tasso to Leonora.

Life and Death, the World and Time,
Mere false shows in some great Mime,
By dreadful mystery sublime.

Do not scorn me, Sweet, I crave ;
Perhaps this woe may somewhat rave :
Yet how should It ? — I can feel
Truth itself at times less real

Do not scorn me, — for behold 1
Near and Nearer swiftly rolled
Solemn glooms of that great Night
No false day shall dawn to blight.

Then the everlasting sleep.
Shall our souls in rapture steep.
Then in tranced Eternity
Thou shalt be made One with me !

Play our parts out in this Mime ! —
Spectres mocking spectral Time,
Whose grim mockery keeps us hurled
Reeling through our spectral World.

What a Theatre expands !
For its Stage all seas and lands ;
By the moon and high stars lit ;
Vaulted by the Infinite.

Tasso to Leonora. 189

Heavens ! and I must bear a part,
With my restless passionate heart
Coffin 'd in this foul dead den
From the surging seas of men.

Well ... we all must act our time
On the unreal Stage sublime ;
None of us is what he seems,
Dramatizing frenzy-dreams.

By such monsters fleered, stung, tost,
In such wildering mazes lost ;
How superbly serious all
Thread the restless, senseless brawl
Of our rabid Carnival !

Noble, beautiful, serene,
Thou must play the part of Queen ;
Crowned with unreal gems and gold.
Phantom purples round thee rolled.

Sweep with stately step the stage ;
Act great passions, love and rage.
With yon crowd of half-souled things
Masked as nobles, princes, kings.

I must act a wretch forlorn,
Wealthless, rankless, lowly born ;

190 Tasso to LeonorcL

Cursed more with a soul and sense
Bounteous, regal, too intense :

Ay, a woeful Wretch indeed ;
Say a starved incarnate Need,
Ever with consummate art
In his strange half-tragic part
Living on an empty heart !

Well, Dear, brief must be our task ;
Little matters in what mask
We may rant our mimic rage
On our unsubstantial Stage.

So, Sweet Love, sustain your role.
Freeze the pulses of your soul ;
Fair, grand, queenly dignified,
Case yourself in marble pride.

I — the while, — by evidence
Of my purest love intense,
Sure that when the Play is o'er
You are mine for evermore —

I will madly waste and moan.
Pouring out against thy throne
All my life of love, — flung back
In wild foam o'er gulfs of black.

Tasso to Leonora. 191

Let some hollow princely mask,
In thine Alpine sunshine bask ;
Blight me with well-feignfed scorn ;
Let me pine and rage forlorn :

Have it counted lunacy,
My audacious love for Thee !
In a lazar-dungeon thrust,
Make me mad to prove you just.

Brava, Dearest ! noble, grand !
Played with wondrous self-command !

great Theatre world-filled,

Whom her spell holds rapt and thrilled,
Shout the plaudits too long stilled !

I, too, — do not I act well
All the horrors of this Hell ?
Act so well. Love, that I feel
Sometimes as if all were real !

What a sickly, foolish fear !
Love soon re-assures me, Dear :

1 must ape such anguish vile
With an inward settled smile.

Do I seem to writhe with pain
Under thy assumed disdain?

192 Tasso to Leonora,

Do I seem, indeed, to be

Far too mean for hope of thee ?

Do I really seem to brood
In this dark den^s solitude,
Phrenzied by the foetid gloom
Of such hideous living tomb ?

Do I seem to cringe, and crave
Mercy from the poor dull slave,
Who, disguised in sceptred power,
Acts thy brother for the hour ?

Yet I scorn him : and serene.
Far above this mimic scene
With its shows of Space and Time,
Dwell with thee in love sublime.

Ah ! your part so grand and fine
Must be harder yet than mine ;
Bitter, but to s^em, in sooth,
False to lovers eternal truth :
Ah ! you have my saddest ruth.

Still, our parts are so forth writ
In this Mime whose venomed wit
Our poor wits so far transcends.
On its acting life depends.
Wild it is, but soon it ends.

Tasso to Leonora. 193

Joy ! the Play must soon be done !
Then the lamps called Stars and Sun
Shall be quenched in perfect gloom
By the grand foreclosing Doom ;

Then the Stage of land and sea
Shall down-vanish utterly ;
Then the fretted azure roof
Roll off like a burning woof ;

Then the serried multitude
Surge out in a vast dim flood ; —
All, all fade and vanish quite,
Leaving void and silent Night.

Then, once more alone, my Sweet,
We shall in the strange dark meet :
You will doff your tinselled pride,
I shall throw my rags aside.

Then in silent darkness deep
Comes the everlasting sleep,
Comes the inexpressive bliss
Of our union's perfectness !

Time's loud turbid stream shall flow,

With its perils, strife and woe,

N

J 94 Tasso to Leonora.

Far from where our Soul then lies
Tranced in still Eternities :

Tho*, soft breathed^from far away,
Its dim soothing murmurs may
Lull us to profounder rest,
Swaying with the Ocean's breast.

For we seek home after this ;
Clinging with a fonder kiss
For the parting which so pained,
For the cold neglect you feigned.

We two only, — Woman, Man,
Wedded ere the Mime began,
Heaven-created Man and Wife
For our whole true timeless life :

Soul of soul and heart of heart ;
Each alone a wretched part,
Lifeless, useless, maimed, unright,
Ever yearning to unite

In the perfect spheral Whole,
Living, self-sufficing Soul,
Swayed through -^ther crystalline
Circling restful in the shine
Of the central Sun Divine.

• . •

Tasso to Leonora. 19S

What, although this trance at times
Must be broken by such mimes ?
What, though we must earn by these
Our reposeful ecstasies ?

Dearest, all the false cold days,
With their bitter mocking Plays,
Swiftly die to glorious Night
When we meet in new delight.

So two actors, Man and Wife,
Mimic freely rage and strife.
Suffering, terror, madness, death.
Whatsoe'er the fable saith :

Earning thus wherewith to feed
That which is their life indeed, —
Long, calm, rich with love intense.
Secret from the shallow sense
Of the blatant audience.

Ah, my weak bewildered heart !
Do I act my monstrous part
With too earnest lifelike truth ? —
Darling, bless me with thy ruth.

Yes, at times my heart is torn
By thy well-pretended scorn :

1 96 Tasso to Leonora.

Soothe this foolish heart of mine
With some secret loving sign.

Perhaps it feeleth Love to be
Of such sacred verity,
That thy merely feigned untruth
Frets it like a serpent-tooth.

Grant it some dear secret sign
Which no other can divine, —
But a word, a flower, to prove
That you are my own, own Love.

Act thy strange part not so well ; —
Even now, with pangs of Hell,
I dread that your neglect is true.
Doubting you, my Soul's Soul, you !

But I strangle such base doubt. . .
How the drear plot lingers out !
What a Chaos, baffling thought ;
Real with spectral interwrought ! . .

Lo, the wondrous Universe !
Hear its mystic powers rehearse
Sweet and subtle melodies,
Vast and solemn harmonies.

Tasso to Leonora, 197

Glorious shifting sceneries, see ;
And the dome's infinity,
Lamp'd by all the rhythmic quires
Of those unconsuming fires !

Mark the stony Fate that broods,
Mark the angel multitudes,
Watching for the tragic range
Of impassioned strife and change.

O sublimest Theatre !
Vexed with the insensate stir
Of this doleful Mime distraught.
By such pigmy puppets wrought.

Pigmies : and they feel it well.
While their hollow vauntings swell :
How uneasily they roam
Through its grandeurs, not at home ! —

Restless in its crystal calms.
Trembling at its thunder-psalms.
Cowering from its noon-poured light,
Shuddering through its scenic night.

How their poor rants quail and die
Far beneath its solemn sky !

198 Tasso to Leonora.

How their clouds of passion all,
Tumid grandeurs ; burst and fall
From its deep-based mountain-wall !

Blood and filth defile the Stage,
Filth of lust and blood of rage ;
Which they will not understand
Are but self-pollution, and
Suicide at second-hand.

Every one there, bad or good,
Is by all misunderstood.
Knowing not himself, — yet strives
To scheme the law for countless lives.

Each is different from each.
None hears right another's speech :
Yet all fume and fight for aye.
With anguish, hatred, death, dismay,
To make others be as they.

Every step they take perplext
Taints the freedom of the next ;
Every thought and word and deed
Curbeth all that shall succeed :

Yet they still must move, nor pause,
By the Drama's rigorous laws ;

Tasso to Leonora. 199

Yet no true Life can there be

Save in thoughts and deeds quite free.

There work foolish Hate and 111,
Eager, subtle, fierce of will';
Good and Love, alas, behold,
Flagging, wavering, languish cold —

Love ! — O Seraphs looking down.
Who of all that wear the crown,
That have won the sacred kiss
Which should symbol Love's pure bliss.
Even dream what true Love is ?

Sternly real the galling pain

Of the vanquished bondman's chain;

But the Victor's diadem

Ever lacks its crowning gem.

Nearly all the noblest parts
Ruined by bad heads or hearts ;
Those in whom redemption lies
Chained, with cankering energies,
From sublime activities-
Each aspiring burst, swayed back,
Soon plods round the old drear track ;
Hope dies, — strangled in the knot
Of such ever-ravelled plot.

200 Tasso to Leonora.

Did no sequent acts extend
On unto a perfect End
Far beyond these brief life-days,
What a hopeless, ghastly maze !

Yes ! did'st Thou not light the scene,
Leonora, O my Queen !
One deep sigh would rend my heart,
" Oh, that I had had no part ! " . . .

As it is, — to keep, perchance.
Sane amid the dizzy dance —
Muse I this fixed truth sublime.
All is but a mocking Mime.

Yet foul demons in my ear
Hiss most wordless hints of fear, —
That this hideous dream's wild strife
Is our souFs substantial life !

How the moment's thought appals ! —
That these stifling dungeon-walls
Are of real during stone ;
That I fester here alone ;
That you cannot be my own !

No ; it is a fiendish lie.

God our Father reigns on high :

Tasso to Leonora. 201

You are truer than my faith. . . .
Oh, were life untwined from death !

But, you cannot scorn me, Dear,
Though I sink in doubt and fear ?
You too know, this mad Mime done,
We shall evermore be one ?

Cling, cling fast to this dear faith.
Rock of life in sea of death :
Our mazed web of doom is wrought
Under God's directing thought.

For were life no flitting dream,
Were things truly what they seem,
Were not all this World-scene vast
But a shade in Time's stream glass'd ;

Were the moods we now display
Less phantasmal than the clay.
In which our poor spirits clad
Act this Vision, wild and sad,
I must be mad, mad, — how mad !

November, 1856.

( 202 )

A HAPPY POET.

Driven by mysterious care and restless pain
The World rolls round me full of noise and strife,

Racking what is not loss to dubious gain :
I live apart my self-fulfilling life

Serenely happy, breathing golden air

Unvext by these dark storms of pain and care.

The tumult whirls for ever to and fro :

I see it all in vision ; strangely wild
And incoherent, yet by some rich glow

Of vigour, thought and passion reconciled j
Its mystery also, wherein dreams Delight,
Brings dear old friends, tho' dimly, back to sight

O happy-dowered Soul ! whom God doth call

To Life's imperial Banquet as a guest
Greeted with gladness in its lofty Hall ;

Bathed clean and cool, sprinkled with odours, drest

A Happy Poet. 203

In fair white folds of free and flowing grace,
The festal raiment of the splendid place ;

Who then is couched 'midst wise and valiant friends,
In place of honour near the glorious Throne

Wherefrom the Host such kingly welcome sends
That all may feel His treasures all their own ;

And who is further gifted to divine

The subtlest savours of the fruit and wine.

Is it not strange ? I could more amply tell
Such woes of men as I discern or dream.

Than this -great happiness I know so well.
Which is in truth profounder than they seem ;

And which abides for ever pure and deep,

Beneath all dreams of wakefulness or sleep.

For this whole world so vast and complicate.
With every being nourished on its breast,

With all its mighty workings-out of Fate,
With that one Soul in all its life exprest.

Must surely all be mine, and mine alone ;

Its power and joy are so indeed my own.

Spring, summer, autumn, winter, float for aye.
Weaving continually their wondrous robe.

Of purple Night inwrought with golden Day
About our earth, whose calm and mighty globe

204 ^ Happy Poet.

Through all the World-strown aether crystalline
Floats ever circling round the sun divine.

The- faint voluptuous trance of summer noon.
Young spring's blithe tenderness so green and fair,

The golden wealth of quiet autumn boon,
The star-keen life of winter glittering bare,

Carol harmonious beauty and delight,

And proffer all their treasures as my right.

The birds rejoice in singing for my joy,

And shaking sunshine thro' the clustered leaves :

A brain that never plotteth them annoy,

A heart that loves them and their injury grieves,

Swift bird and beast and jewelled insect free

Full well can trust ; one brotherhood are we.

The flowers all love me, and the trees befriend ;

Lily and rose are eager to impart
By fragrance, colour, or some perfect bend,

Delicious secrets that surprise my heart ;
I muse beneath the forests, and they are
With all their countless tongues oracular.

Snow-vested mountains mighty and austere
Persuade me : Climb us from thy lowly home.

And we will be thine Altars ; offer here
From our pure silence to yon naked dome

A Happy Poet. 205

Thy sacrificial thoughts, in breathless awe
And adoration of Eternal Law.

And evermore old Ocean murmurs me :

Come forth, and love our heritage, my Child ;

Safe-cherished on my bosom shalt thou be

In death-sweet calms, ih tempests dark and wild ;

Cadence of moonlit waves and mid-sea moan

Shall dower thy Voice with many a mystic tone.

O vaulted sky, O bounteous land and sea,
O perfect World, the Palace and the Shrine

Of infinite beauty, truth and mystery,
That flood the soul with yearning bliss divine

Till it dissolves in their exuberant might,

As some frail cloud surcharged with noon's full light.

The banquet-hall is noble, and its wine

A nectar worthy of Olympian lyres ;
Solemn and sacred is the infinite shrine.

With stars immortal for its altar-fires ;
Yet shrine and palace are scarce noticed things
When all the guests and worshippers are kings :

Imperial all ; each freer than the sun

Doth live and move, supreme, self-centred, sole ;
And yet they are my people, every one ;

My life of heart and brain is in the whole ;

2o6 A Happy Poet.

Their hopes, fears, woes, joys, virtues, sins, despairs.
Their full-orbed lives are mine no less than theirs.

The stern exultance of the thoughtful youth
Enrolled against the tyrants of his land ;

The noblest victor's self-contemning ruth

When fireless eye must gaze on bloody hand ;

The greed of power, the sateless lust of pride,

Whence kingly robes in blood are purple-dyed ;

The deep complacency of subtle skill

In ravelled games, though winning wins a loss ;

The drear perversity with which one's will
With wretched consciousness persists to cross

His own best good, his dearest friends' best prayers.

Devouring sullenly their generous cares ;

The fogs of fear in which their fellows loom

Like threatening monsters, and the firm earth yields ;

The mists of hope and love-joy which illume

With golden strangeness their poor homes and fields ;

The sophistries of passion-moulded thought

By which they use to make " I would," " I ought : "

Free childhood's life, so rich it need not ask
Poor thought to justify its flower-fresh grace ;

Youth's yearning tumult when the constant mask
Seems falling first firom Nature's glorious face,

A Happy Poet, 207

The infinite joy and sadness of its strife
To probe the awful secrets of our life ;

The firm deliberate strength fif manhood's prime,
Appraising well the World, its smiles and frowns, —

Yet for the spoils and triumphs of this Time
Ceding the heirship of eternal crowns ;

Old age with Heaven's first rays upon^its brow,

Yet clinging feebly to the worn-out Now :

His nature who from action will refrain

In plenitude of spiritual thought.
And his who keepeth every nerve a-strain

In constant labour, hope and fear distraught ;
(In thought's pure aether float all worlds of life ;
The cold eye sees, warm being lives through strife) :

Those eagle spirits native to the skies

Who drink the Sun's bare splendour, and contemn
Such painted screens as unanointed eyes

Must interpose between His shine and them, —
The veils and imageries through which their sense
Alone can bear the formless light intense ;

(But Suns shine spheric to the eagle-eye.
Though formless to the owlet-sight, when bare) :

The soul opprest with its humanity,
Which must have God's most personal love and care ;

2o8 A Happy Poet

The self-ruled souls, that need not supplicate.
Feeling themselves divine and peers of Fate :

All, all are mine, are Me. How vast the Stage !

Imperious Doom, unvanquishable WiU,
Throughout the Drama constant battle wage j

The Plot evolves with tangled good and ill ;
The passions overflood the shores of Time ;
With God the full Solution waits sublime.

If I so much contemplate all the scene
As if to pleasure me the whole were wrought,

I gaze upon the actors great and mean
With reverent love, with unaccusing thought ;

Their wails and curses are mine own no less

Than their most tranquil strains of nobleness.

And yet, how ever-gracious is my dower.

Whose noon-tide bliss consumes its first alloy,

Whose midnight woe by some celestial power
Enkindles purest stars of solemn joy :

My lover glows, the world is all June-bowers ;

My widower weeps, the tears rain April-showers.

For I must sing of all I feel and know ;

Waiting with Memnon passive near the palms,
Until the heavenly light doth dawn and grow

And thrill my silence into mystic psalms ;

A Happy Poet. 209

From unknown realms the wind streams sad or gay,
The trees give voice responsive to its sway.

For I must sing ; of mountains, deserts, seas.

Of rivers ever flowing, ever flowing ;
Of beasts and birds, of grass and flowers and trees

For ever fading and for ever growing ;
Of calm and storm, of night and eve and noon.
Of boundless space, and sun and stars and moon :

And of the secret sympathies that bind

All beings to their wondrous dwelling-place ;

And of the perfect Unity enshrined

In omnipresence throughout time and space.

Alike informing with its full control

The dust, the stars, the w^orm, the human soul :

And most supremely of my human kin ;

Their thoughts and deeds, their valours and their fears.
Their griefs and joys, their virtue and their sin,

Their feasts and wars, their cradles and their biers,
Their temples, prisons, homes and ships and marts,
The subtlest windings of their brains and hearts.

In all their faiths and sacraments I see
Celestial features through the earthly veil,

In all then: dreams some deep reality,

In all their structures beams that cannot fail,

aio A Happy Poet.

In all their thoughts some truth which doth inspire,
In all their passions sparks of quenchless fire.

For singing, in all thoughts I glimpse the law

Ineffable, eternal, veiled behind,
And robe it in full verse-folds dark with awe ;

And singing, in all passions I must find
New secrets more impassioned, crowning them
With golden words, a fulgent diadem.

So heartless gibes of infidel mistrust,

And quibblings spun by some poor wretch to snare
His conscience into sanction of his lust,

Or bind it into cowardly despair,
Come forth from me the universal Nay
That limits all our life's triumphant Yea.

So softest sighings of a maiden's heart

When first Love's fingers touch the trembling chords.
Thrill through my soul with their delicious smart,

And fly abroad from me new-winged with words
So bright and beautiful and swift to soar
That all must love them now and evermore.

I sing, I sing, rejoicing in the singing.

And men all love me for my songs so sweet,

Even as they love the rapturous lark upspringing
And singing loud his joy the sun to greet ;

A Happy Poet. 2 1 1

O happiest lot, to win all love and blessing
For that whose own delight is past expressing !

Are men in truth not joyous strong and whole,
But lofty strains thro' broken lyres expressed ?

My frame is all attunbd to my soul,

My limbs are glad to do my mind's behest ;

To wander through the wide realm many a day,

As free as thoughts that wander every way :

To climb the mountain brow thro' moonlit gloom,
With vigorous breathing of its lonely air,

And watch the trancbd dawn from out her tomb
To perfect resurrection waking there :

To revel through the storm when fire and rain

And thunder make a man all heart and brain :

To pierce the inmost heart of solemn woods.

Where our great Mother coucheth grand and dim.

And baring her full breast in solitudes,
Suckles each child as if she had but him,

With that same milk magnificent and bold

Whence Gods and Titans drew their strength of old ;

To plunge away from earth on lonely shores
And breast the green sea-surges foaming strong.

Free as an eagle when it sways and soars
The billows of the tempest-sea among ;

212 A Happy Poet.

To sail alone the deep, past rocks and caves,
From isle to isle upon the heaving waves :

To row adown great rivers from their rills,

Gliding thro' dawn and eve and noon and night.

Winding between the patient woods and hills.

The broad green meadows, fields and gardens bright;

Past homesteads each sole-sacred as a star

Gleaming thro' clustered foliage near and far ;

Past peaceful hamlets loosely gathered round
Their spires still pointing from the graves to God ; —

Past rich and mighty cities far-renowned.
So overcharged with life the soul is awed

To think but of such massed intensity ;

And so into the earth-surround mg sea.

How the rich days of life and joy and light,

The unregretful, unforeboding days,
Usher me softly into solemn night ;

Then sleep her spell divine upon me lays.
And I am tranced and fed with perfect rest.
Or wander far through dreamland, fancy-blest

Then, when the night's dusk curtains are withdrawn
And sleep dissolves her spell of mysteries.

A Happy Poet. 213

With what eternal freshness each new dawn
Greets me with fair and golden promises !
While born anew and young with da/s new birth
I hear the lark out-trill my infinite mirth.

So rich and sweet is Life. And what is Death ?
• The tranquil slumbers dear and strange and boon
That feed at whiles our waking being's breath ;

The solemn midnight of this glorious noon,
With countless distant stars, and each a sun.

Revealed harmonious with our daily one.

1857: 1859.

( 214 )

SUGGESTED BY MATTHEW ARNOLD'S

"stanzas from the GRANDE CHARTREUSE."

That one long dirge-moan sad and deep,
Low, muffled by the solemn stress

Of such emotion as doth steep
The soul in brooding quietness,

Befits our anguished time too well,

Whose Life-march is a funeral knell.

Dirge for a mighty Creed outworn —
Its spirit fading from the earth.

Its mouldering body left forlorn :
Weak idol ! feeding scornful mirth

In shallow hearts ; divine no more

Save to some ignorant pagan poor ;

And some who know how by Its light
The past world well did walk and live.

And feel It even now more bright
Than any lamp mere men can give ;

Suggested by Arnold's *^ Stanzas,^^ 215

So cling to It with yearning faith,
Yet own It almost quenched in death :

While many who win wealth and power
And honours serving at Its shrine,

Rather than lose their worldly dower

Proclaim their dead thing " Life divine ; "

And sacrifice to coward lust

Their own souls' truth, a people's trust.

And will none mourn the mighty Dead, —

Pillar of heavenly fire and cloud,
Which through this life's wild desert led

For whole millenniums each grand crowd
Of sages, bards, saints, heroes, all
Whose names we glory to recall?

None mourn Him, dead, with deep-moved soul,
Whom, living, all our sires adored ?

None feel the heavy darkness roll
Stifling about us, when the Lord

Leaves us to walk by our own light.

That one pale speck in boundless Night ? —

That earthly lamp when sun and star,
When all the heavenly lights are lost :

Does it shed radiance round afar ?
Our pathway is by deep gulfs cross'd :

2i6 Suggested ly Arnold^ s " Stanzas,^'

It fathoms none. We lift it high :
It casts not one beam on the sky.

If He thus died as no more fit

To lead the modern march of thought,
Supreme, — commanding, guiding it.

With noblest love and wisdom fraught ;
He was at least Divine ; and none
Of human souls can lead it on.

We pine in our dark living tomb,
Waiting the God-illumined One

Who, only, can disperse the gloom ;
Completing what the Dead begun,

Or farther leading us some space

Toward our eternal resting-place.

But Israel wanders shepherdless,
Or gloom-involved unmoving lies,

And in despair's stark sinfulness
Reviles the promised Paradise

It cannot reach — Father divine !

Let us not long thus hopeless pine.

Still the deep dirge-notes long and low
Breathe forth strange anguish to recall—

Could we forget — our direst woe :
A proud strong Age fast losing all

Suggested by Arnold^s " Stanzas, ^^ 217

Earth has of Heaven ; bereft of faith ;
And living in Eternal Death.

And loudly boastful of such life :

Blinded by our material might,
Absorbed in frantic worldly strife, '

Unconscious of the utter Night
Whose palpable and monstrous gloom
Is gathering for our spirits' tomb.

We feel as gods in our own hearts ;

Seeming to conquer Time and Space ;
Wealth gorging our imperial marts ;

Earth pregnant, from the fierce embrace
Our matter-lusting spirits press,
With unexampled fruitfulness.

God, answering well our worldly prayer,

Our hearts* chief prayer through all the hours

Of selfish joy and sordid care.

Comes down to us in golden showers :

God turns to Mammon at our cry ;

Our souls wealth-crushed, dross-stifled lie.

Those few, how rich ! while this great mass.
Myriads with equal greed for gold.

Sink in such want and woe, alas !
As never can on earth be told :

21 8 Suggested by Arnold* s " Stanzas.

99

These starve, and those yet wealthier rise ;
Meanwhile in both the spirit dies.

Hear now the thrilling dirge-notes peal
The anguished cry in thunder rolls :-r-

The few yet left who think and feel,
Who yearn with strenuous soaring souls

For more than earth or time can grant ;

Where, where shall they appease their want ?

Black disbelief, substantial doubt
Wreathe — blent into one louring cloud

Through which Heaven's light can scarce shine out —
Round all the Faiths: all in such shroud

Fade ghostlike to th' entombing Past :

Our Heaven is wildly overcast.

Yet each Creed, senile, sick, half-dead,

With bitter spite and doting rage
Reviles all others. Whoso, led

By thirst of love to pilgrimage,
Seeks now old God-given Wells of Life,
Finds drought-dry centres of vain strife ;

And turns away in blank despair,

To scoff or weep as fits his mood.
O God in Heaven, hear our prayer !

We know Thou art, AUwise, Allgood,

Suggested by Arnold^ s ^^ Stanzas, ^^ 219

Yet sink in godless misery :

Oh, teach us how to worship Thee !

PART II.

The great Form lies there nerveless still :

But as we fix our longing gaze
It grows in grandest beauty, till

We worship in entranced amaze ;
Such holy love and wisdom seem
To be there rapt in heavenly dream.

Oh, if He may once more awake !

Oh, if it be not death, but sleep ! —
And He from that dread slumber break

Refreshed and strong, full-powered to sweep
The darkness from our path again ;
Once more the Guiding Star of men !

Yet — though it be death — view It well.

The brow, how nobly high and broad !
What love on those shut lips might well !

This Form sublimely templed God :
And, if not perfect, is a shrine
Approaching well the most divine.

Do not turn hastily away
From mighty death to petty life ;

230 Suggested by AmoWs *^ Stanzas.^'

Gaze in deep reverence on the clay

With such a souPs expression rife ;
Read here, read long, the features worn
By One incarnate Heavenly-born.

So may we hope to recognise

That Greafer One who shall succeed

This death-bound Monarch, who now lies
In mute appealing for our need :

God cannot long desert His earth ;

In the Old's death the New has birth.

What say we ? — we know well this truth,
There is no death for the Divine ;

Which lives in ever-perfect youth :
The Form alone — its earthly shrine —

Is subject to earth's mortal sway ;

Sickens, and dies, and rots away.

Thus each Form in its turn expires,

No more with all revealed Truth rife, —

Which even at that time inspires

Some new and nobler form with life.

Grander and vaster to express

More of Its infinite heavenliness.

Thus has it been since Time's first birth,
Thus must it be for evermore :

Suggested by Arnold^ s ^* Stanzas J^ 221

Still lie, moth-eaten, on the earth

Old garments which this Spirit wore ;
Till, soiled and rent, they were ofF-thrown,
And wider-flowing robes put on.

They could not grow with His great growth,
Pauseless though slow throughout the years ;

And vainly worshippers — so loath

To leave what lengthened use endears —

May still the empty robes adore ;

Their virtue was from Him who wore.

Let none say the Divine is dead.

Although this Form be soul-less quite :

The Heavenly Sun doth ever shed
His lifeful heat, His saving light ;

Never our earth doth lose His ray,

Save when she turns herself away.

Let none say the Divine is dumb,
Although His voice no more we hear :

It is that we are deaf become.

For measured to each eye and ear

His glory shines. His voice outspeaks ;

To each He gives the most it seeks.

Our spirits may for ever grow ;
And He will fill them as before,

222 Suggested by Arnold's " Stanzas. '^

And still their measure overflow

With His unlessened infinite More :
He gives us all we can receive ;
He teaches all we can believe.

The pure can see Him perfect-pure ;

The strong feel Him, Omnipotence ;
The wise, All-wise ; He is obscure

But to the gross and earth-bound sense :
Alas for us with blinded sight
Who dare to cry, There is no light !

PART HI.

Nay, ask us not to rise and leave

Him from whom power and life seem gone •
Say not that it is weak to grieve ;

Duty does nof, now, urge us on :
In vain ye urge ; too well we know
We cannot by our own strength go.

Vainly ye choose you Saviours now
Of men, — however good and wise

Be those your mean faith would endow
With power to which no man can rise :

No best men living lure our faith

From the Divine though veiled in death.

Suggested by Arnold's " Stanzas J' 223

Vainly ye wander every way

Throughout the earth in search of Heaven,
Changing your useless path each day

With each new transient impulse given
By human guides, who still agree
In naught but fallibility.

We should know better from the lore
Of worldly wisdom — keen mistrust —

On which our minds so love to pore ;
Nor leave for any child of dust

This One Divine : to Him adhere

Till the diviner One appear.

My brothers, let us own the truth,
Bitter and mournful though it be, —

That we, who spent our dreary youth
In foul and sensual slavery,

Are all too slavish, too unmanned.

For Conquerors of the Promised Land.

In unprogressive wanderings

We plod the desert to and fro ;
And fiery serpents' mortal stings,

Earthquake and sword and weary woe
And pestilence deal fearful death
Amongst us for our want of faith.

224 Suggested by Arnold^ s " Stanzas,^'

Far-scattered o'er the Waste forlorn

Our bones shall whiten through the years,

And startle pilgrims yet unborn ;

Our noblest captains, priests and seers.

Dark death shall one by one remove,

For lack of wisdom, faith, or love.

Yet be we patient, meek and pure.

Unselfishly resigned to Grod's
Mysterious judgments ; and endure

Our sore scarce-intermitted loads
Of grief and weary pain, imbued
With sternly passive fortitude :

And pray that those who shall succeed
Prove worthy of a happier life

Than we dare ask for as our meed ;
That they a constant noble strife

Victorious against 111 may wage.

And gain the glorious heritage.

Cease now to cry and storm, and move.
By such tumultuous toil opprest

As, without guidance, vain must prove.
When God keeps still can ye not rest ?

When He sends night so dark and deep,

Why shrink from renovating sleep ?

Suggested ly Arnold? s ^^ Stanzas.^' 325

Sleep, to His care resigned, a space ;

That when He rises in His might
To lead our hosts from this dire place,

We may have strength and heart to fight
All evils that would bar our way,
And march unfaltering all the day.

Yes, let us stay in loving grief.

Which patient hope and trust yet cheer,

Silent beside our silent Chief,
Till His Successor shall appear ;

Till death's veil fall from off His face.

Or One anointed take His place.

Nay, — our adoring love should have
More faith than to believe that He,

Before Another comes to save,
Can leave us in blind misery

Without a Guide : God never can

So utterly depart from man.

We will move onward ! — let us trust
That there is life and saving power

In this dear Form which seems but dust.
Arise, arise ! though darkness lower,

Earnest, bold-hearted, cease to mourn ;

It shall before our hosts be borne.

p

226 Suggested by Arnold's " Stanzas.^'

Triumphantly He ever led

Our faithful armies while alive ;

What though His form be cold and dead,
His Spirit doth that death survive :

We conquer by that Soul this Form

Enshrined, not ill, while free and warni.

Thus men have honoured fellow men,
Who dying left a lofty fame ;

And won most glorious victories then
By inspiration of a Name :

If in men's names such life abode,

Shall there not in His, — Son of God.

A dawn-light creeps throughout the gloom.
Sullenly sinks the storm of wrath ;

Life blossoms in our desert tomb ;
Mysteriously we find a path

Which leadeth on to Paradise.

Thus to our love's faith He replies !

But, while the dirge still rolls away
In passionate thunders wildly blent

With mournful moanings, let us pray —
Still on our Holy War intent —

" O God, revive the seeming Dead ;

Or send Another in His stead !

Suggested by Arnold^ s ^^ Stanzas J*' 327

" The wintry midnight drear is past,

But still the dawn gleams grey and cold ;

Dread phantoms haunt each restless blast,
Our stumblings still are manifold :

Oh, let Thy cloudless Sun rise soon.

And flood us with His summer noon ! "

>/;/, 1855.

( 328 )

BY THE SEA.

I.

The burning golden Rose of the Day

Droops down to the Western Sea ;
And the amber and purple flush of the sky

And the crimson glow of the sea
Ebb, ebb away, — fade, fade and die ;
While the earth, all mantled in shadowy grey,
Washes her brow with a restful sigh

In the cool sweet dews of the gloaming.

Then the shining silver Lily of the Night

Opens broad her leaves divine,

Afloat on the azure hyaline
Of the heavenly sea ; and her purest light
Kisses the earth that dreaming lies

In a still, enchanted sleeping ;
While the heavens with their countless starry eyes

Still watch are keeping.

By the Sea, 229

The Earth loves the golden Rose of the Day,
From which she distils the fiery wine

Of immortal youth and magnificent might ;

But the Sea loves the silver Lily of the Night,

For her beams are as wands of a holier sway,
Whose spell brings the trance divine :

The Rose for Life's feast and the festal array,
The Lily for Death's shrine.

IL .

** The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores."

— Keats.

The earth lay breathless in a fever-swoon

Beneath the burning noon,
Sun-stricken, dazed with light and sick with heat :
Then came the waters from the cool midsea

Trooping up blithe and free,
And fanned her brow with airs so fresh and sweet
And crept about her gently and caressed

Her broad unheaving breast
With the white cincture of a magic zone ;
Bathing and swathing her faint limbs, that were

In the fierce sun-fire bare,
With lucid liquid folds of rich green purple strown.

23 o By the Sea,

Then as the sun went sinking to his rest

Down the enamoured west,
The waves were leaving the calm earth to dreams ;
Bearing the smirch of her long day's turmoil.

The sweat of her fierce toil,
The sultry breaths and languid feverous streams ;
Bearing all far away, and as they went

Whispering with blithe content,
To drown and cleanse them in the pure midsea :
The while the earth all dewy sweet and clean.

And drowsily serene
Beneath the star-dewed heavens might slumber safe
and free.

III.

A BATHING SNATCH.

O Sun lay down thy golden bridge

Across the waters clear !
O foam flash round each rock and ridge

That soon shall disappear !
O tide swell up a full spring-tide

Upon the shingly shore !
For, oh, I love thy surge-sweep wide

And long-resounding roar !

By the Sea. 231

IV.

A LAMENT.

Leafless and brown are the trees ;

And the wild waste rocks are brown,
Which the wan green sea so stealthily

Comes creeping up to drown ;
And the north-west breeze blows chill,

And the sky is cold and pale ;
And nevermore from this desolate shore

Shall I watch my true-love's sail.

V.

The stars came gliding out of the sea

To gaze on the sleeping city,
With a tremulous light in their glances bright

Of wonderful love and pity.

The breeze was breathing its olden song
In a drowsy murmurous chanting ;

While the noble bay, with its moonlight spray,
Kept time in a slumbrous panting.

The city couched in a deep repose

All toil, all care suspended ;
The roar and the strife of its turbid life

In the calm of nature blended.

2^2 By the Sea.

Alas ! I sighed with a weary sigh,

That all the sin and sorrow,
Now dreaming there, so calm and fair.

Must wake afresh to-morrow.

Would that the whole might thus rest on.
Entranced, for ever sleeping ;

The sea and the sky, and the stars on high.
And those myriads born for weeping !

Jersey^ 1861-1862.

( 233 )

PROLOGUE

TO THE

PILGRIMAGE TO SAINT NICOTINE OF THE HOLY

HERB.

In every country and in every age

Have men been wont to go on pilgrimage,

As I have read, — each visiting that shrine

Which seems to him most blessed and divine ;

Athwart far lands, athwart the wild sea foam :

Some to Jerusalem, and some to Rome ;

And some to Lourdes, — trh lourdes, trh lourdes^ God wot,

Les pauvres dmes which seek that sacred spot ;

And some to Santiago far in Spain,

A near the roar of the Atlantic main ;

And some unto our lady of Lorette, —

Full many votaries this Dame doth get :

The very Paynims bring their vows and prayers

To Mecca and to Yeddo and Benares :

While others piously seek out the toiiibs

Of mighty men who have fulfilled their dooms.

234 Prologue.

The fields where battles long ago were fought,
The scenes wherever wondrous works were wrought,
The sites of antique cities overthrown,
The fanes of fair gods dead and turned to stone : —
What need write more? when saint and bard and
sage

Declare our whole life but one Pilgrimage ;
A journey from the cradle to the bier

Of all the restless millions wandering here;

A toilsome travel of all things alive

Unto the Temple where they all arrive,

And bowing down before the Shrine of Death

Find peace at last in breathing their last breath.

But furthermore thus teacheth the wise man ;
That age by age our human caravan
Is like unto all those that went before •
And all that shall come after evermore :
New names, new robes, new thoughts and words and

deeds.
New toys and treasures, sciences and creeds,
But ever the same passions and same needs :
The same old Drama on the same old Stage,
The same old tears and laughters, joy and rage ;
The selfsame characters upon the Scene,
Wise, foolish, rich and poor, and great and mean ;

Prologue, 235

Old actors fall away with weary hearts,

Fresh actors come to take the sel&ame parts ;

And whosoe'er the destined roles may fill,

Hamlet is Hamlet — Osric, Osric still ;

And ever with the fifth act come the knaves

To vent their clownish jests and dig the graves ;

And ever with the last scene entereth

Some princely one demanding — " O proud death,

What feast is toward in thine eternal cell ? "

And so the Play is over : very well.

It shall be played again, and have a run,

Coeval with the earth's around the sun.

Lo this is what men call philosophic.
Whereof I know not anything perdie,
But it hath brought us to our proper theme.
Our Card of beauty and of joy supreme.
Our peerless Pilgrimage unto the Shrine
Of most beneficent Saint Nicotine.
Five hundred years agone Dan Chaucer went
A-riding through the pleasant lanes of Kent,
In April on the eight and twentieth day.
Which were with us I ween a week in May,^

^ There has been much learned astronomical discussion, of
dubious import, about the exact time of the year, as indicated in the
opening of the Prologue to the ** Canterbury Tales." If the deep
scientific gentlemen engaged had but condescended to look forward

2^6 Prologue.

He and his compagnie of twenty-nine.

Both men and women, to the holy shrine

Of Him by hot Knights at the altar slain.

And now by Master Froude killed over again

All in cold blood ; alas ! a piteous doom.

Sword-pierced in life and pen-pierced in the tomb :

But Master Freeman now hath set to work

To maul this Froude as if he were a Tiurk ;

And he who kicked A'Becket as he lay

Is like to kick the bucket in this fray.

This compagnie it was of all degrees,

The high, the low, the midway ; and all these,

Yea, each and all, our Poet doth rehearse

And picture lifelike in his cordial verse ;

to the Man of Law's Prologue they might have read in the b^inning
thereof —

" And though he [the host] were not depe expert in lore,
He wiste it was the eighte and twenty day
Of April, that is messager to May."

This may suffice to fix the date accurately enough for us who are not
astronomers. The Old Style, I suppose, would then be about eight
days behind the New, as the difference I believe increases three days
in every four centuries (one in each of the three which is not a mul-
tiple of four), and was eleven days in 1752, when the New Style
was adopted in England (we all know how the populace vociferously
demanded the eleven days of which they conceived themselves de-
frauded) : the Russians, who keep to the Old Style, now date twelve
days behind us. Thus Chaucer's April 28 would be our May 6. In
reading Herrick and his contemporaries on the delights of going a-
Maying, we are apt to forget that their May-day the 1st was our nth ;
so with many old weather proverbs.

Prologue. 237

As sweet and rath as his own daisy was

"Upon the smalfe, soft^, swot^ gras,"

As rich and free and cheerful as the gush

Of gratulation from a mid- June thrush :

I rede you read him once and twice and thrice,

And over again ; it is my boon advice ;

And learn what all these men and women were

In mind and body, state and garb and air ;

And feel what full red-blooded life did flow

Thorough their veins five hundred years ago ;

And find what Tales they told upon their way

Of noble tragedy and jolly play ;

And see that we are now what they were then,

Since fashions change, not women, neither men.

What this first Poet, whom we love so well.
Of merrie England, in his verse did tell
Of these glad Pilgrims, both their mind and make.
That Artist of the Visions clep^d Blake,
Who also sang delightful young-world songs,
Soaring aloof firom all our old-world wrongs.
Did picture forth with pencil and engrave.
Form after form to match the Poet brave :
We touch not him, for he was grand and wild ;
We leave this giant who became a child.
A graceful limner, Stothard was his name,
Did set himself to enterprise the same.

238 Prologue.

And him we follow in our noble Card ;
But whereas he went backward to the Bard
Through all the centuries, to match his rhyme,
We choose our Pilgrims from our very time :
For why ? our Saint is not the Saint of old.
But hath more votaries a hundredfold ;
Lo you shall hear of him anon, but first
Behoves the jolly Pilgrims be rehearsed ;
New Saint, New Pilgrims, but the counterparts
Of Chaucer's rout en route in brains and hearts.

1878.

( 239 )

ARCH ARCHERY.

You ask me, darling, why I smile,

And at what pleasant thing ?
My thoughts go back a few months' while

To the fairest day in spring ;

The fairest day, in the end of March ;

The sun shone warm and bright ;
All blue and bland was the heaven's arch

With its calm clouds soft and white.

And some one said " I should like to go, .

And shoot in this pleasant breeze."
And I humbly prayed " Let me be your bow,

You can bend me as you please."

And the saucy girl said " A bow of yew !

O a bow of yew must be good :
They say it is tough and strong and true.

Though a grave-devoted wood."

240 j4rch Archery.

Over the rolling waves of sward

We lightly skimmed along ;
While the larks from the cloud and the azure poured

Freely their first full song

Then leaf-like came a-dropping down,

When their joy thro* heaven was told,
To the short sweet grass, to the gorse half brown

Half lit with shining gold.

And I said or thought : Not Dian queen

With her quiver and her bow,
A statelier form, a purer mien,

A lighter step could show.

Till we came to a long lone quiet glen.

Much loved of the thoughtful sheep :
Before the Flood — or, who knows when ? —

It perhaps was a river deep.

There were the targets ready placed.

Right gorgeous to behold ;
With their red rings, blue rings, white rings graced,

Around the central gold.

And there our mighty match we shot.
Like eager Volunteers.

Jrch Jrchery, 241

Hit we the mark, or hit we not,
What merry laughs and jeers !

Gaily we tripped along the glen
Between the targets two,

With riant races now and then
For arrows in the dew.

O arch was she with her jest and smile,

And arch was I, I ween ;
But the Archer archest all the while

Was shooting there unseen.

Swift, swift and keen his arrows flew.

Well aimed at either heart ;
And pierced the poor things thro' and thro',

With a strange delicious smart.

Well — when the match was fairly done,

Who triumphed, she or I ?
We both had lost, we both had won ;

It ended in a tie.

For that third Archer, we agreed.

Alone should judge the case ;
And thus he solemnly decreed,

With wisdom in his face. —

!

Il

242 jirch Archery,

" You — maiden of the witching eyes,

You — ^happiest of men ;
Must share the honour and the prize.

Nor ever strive again.

"For thus on either I bestow

The meed that fitteth well —
She is the mistress of the bow.

He bears away the belL"

Curragh^ 1 86a

( M3 )

LOW LIFE.

AS OVERHEARD IN THE TRAIN.

That jolly old gentleman, bless his white hat !
Wouldn't come in to spoil our chat ;
We are alone and we can speak, —
What have you done. Miss, all the week ?

" Oh, all the day it's been fit and shew,
And all the night it's been trim and sew,
For the ladies are flocking to Exeter Hall
In lovely light dresses fit for a ball."

Under your eye a little dark streak,
And a point of red on the top of your cheek.
And your temples quite dim against your hair ;
This sha'n't last very much longer I swear.

And what is the news from the workroom now ?
" The week began with a bit of a row ;
Emmy Harley married young Earl
Just in the busy time ! " — sensible girl !

244 Low Life.

" That was on Monday ; Missis said
It was very ungrateful, very ill-bred,
And very unkind to us when she knew
The work so heavy, the hands so few.

" But this was nothing : the minute we woke
On Wednesday, before it seemed any one spoke,
We knew that poor Mary Challis was dead ;
Kate Long had been sleeping in the same bed.

" Mary worked with us till twelve, when tea
Was brought in to keep us awake, but she
Was so ill then, Miss Cooper sent her to bed ;
And there in the morning they found her dead ;

" With Kate fast asleep by her side : they had come
To see how she was, and the sight struck them dumb :
At last they roused Kate and led her away ;
She was sick and shuddering all the day.

" Kate says when she went up at four to their room
She was stupid with sleep ; but she marked a faint bloom

On Mary's pale face, and she heard her breathe low

A light fluttering breath now quick and now slow ;

"And feared to disturb her, for she had a cough.
But the moment she laid her head down she was oflf^
And knew nothing more till they stood by the side
Of the bed : p'r'aps Mary slept on till she died.

Low Life. 245

" They buried her yesterday. Kate was there,
And she was the only one Missis could spare ;
Some dresses were bound to be finished by night,
For the ladies to go in to Church all right.

" Poor Mary ! she didn't fear dying she said.

Her father drinks and her mother is dead ;

But she hoped that in Heaven the white garments wear

For ever ; no fashions and dressmaking There."

My Love, if the ladies most pious of all
Who flock to the Church and to Exeter Hall
Find Heaven has but one dress for rich as for poor,
And no fashions, they'll very soon cut it I'm sure.

I saw you ten minutes on Tuesday night,
Then I took the 'bus home for I had to write ;
And I wrote and I wrote like an engine till five.
When ipy fingers were dead and the letters alive.

A fair bill of costs from a deuce of a draft
In our Cashier's worst scrawl like Chinese ran daft ;
With entries between, on the margin, the back,
And figures like short-hand marks put to the rack.

But our Common-law Clerk is going away.

And the Gov'nor had me in yesterday,

And said he would try me, he thought I might do ;

And I jumped at the chance, for this child thinks so too.

246 Low Life,

Just fancy, each morning a jolly good walk.
And instead of the copying, bustle and talk !
And if I do well — and well I will do —
A couple of sov.s a week for my screw !

And then when Fm free of the desk and the stool,
Do you think you will keep to the nunnery rule
Of the shop, till you go off like Mary some night
Smothered in work from the air and the light.

We'll use our professional talents, my dear :

You shall make such a wedding dress, best of the year !

And a wonderful marriage-deed I will draw

With magnificent settlements perfect in law.

Thus doing our duties in those states of life
In which it has pleased God to call us, my wife /
" And how much a year will you settle on me ? "
My body and soul and — what we shall see.

1865.

( M7 )

THE DREAMER.

Sing the old song while the dear child is sleeping,

Sing it most sweetly and tenderly low ;
Not to awake her again to her weeping ;

Let the soft notes through her dream gently flow.
What, though the passionate tears were down-streaming

From eye-balls long parched, when she lay down to
rest:
Poor thing, she now is most tranquilly dreaming ;

Her life is again with His dear presence blest.

See, o'er her wan face what joy brightly flushes ;

Beneath the dark lids how her eyes swell and gleam !
The sweet smile is drowned in the glow of love-blushes !

Yes ! he companions her now in the dream.
Darling ! her lips murmur softly and slowly, —

What sacred vows and confessions of love ?
Is not this Dream-life most blessed and holy.

Less of the earth than of Heaven above ?

' • * * » *

248 The Dreamer.

No, do not draw down the white lawny curtain :

The moonlight sleeps still on her hair, on her face ;
Mystical blending of shadow uncertain

With lustre as holy as Heaven's blessbd grace.
It stirs not her slumber, but chastened and tender —

Our musical murmur half-thrilling its breast —
Pervades with a blissful entrancement of splendour

That dim world of dreams where her soul findeth rest.

Sing the old song still with low-voicfed sweetness,

To harmonise well with her brief dream of bliss.
Blending therewith to ecstatic completeness : —

The poor pallid lips, are they trembling a kiss !
So may the words and the scenes of her vision

To her tranced spirit more exquisite grow ;
With beauty and glory and rapture Elysian

Subtly attuned to our soft music's flow :

And she may, alas, when she wakes with the morrow

To bitter reality, hopeless and lone,
Remember far more to sooth anguish and sorrow

Of the dream and the dream-words of him who is gone :
And so, when we sing the old song in her hearing,

May she with wonder and secret joy find
The dear words, the bliss of her dream re-appearing

With the loved music that flows through her mind.

The Dreamer. 249

Perhaps she now hears him an old love-lay singing ;

Does it not thrill in her eager, fixed face ?
Or hears the old Church-bells in golden chimes ringing

The union that cannot in this world take place.
But sleep, darling, sleep ; oh, dwell long in that heaven,

The strange, solemn dream-land so holy and calm,
Which God hath in mercy to such as thee given ;

Where all stricken hearts may find wound-healing balm.

1855.

v.^;^''

( 250 )

ROBERT BURNS.

He felt scant need
Of church or creed.
He took small share •
In saintly prayer,
His eyes found food for his love ;
He could pity poor devils condemned to hell,
But sadly neglected endeavours to dwiell

With the angels in luck above : ;

To save one's precious peculiar soul
He never could understand is the whole

Of a mortal's business in life,
While all about him his human kin
With loving and hating and virtue and sin

Reel overmatched in the strife.
" The heavens for the heavens, and the earth for the

earth!
I am a Man — I'll be true to my birth —
Man in my joys, in my pains."

Robert Bums, 25 1

So fearless, stalwart, erect and free,
He gave to his fellows right royally

His strength, his heart, his brains ;
For proud and fiery and swift and bold —
Wine of life from heart of gold.
The blood of his heathen manhood rolled

Full-billowed through his veins.

1859.

( 252 )

WILLIAM BLAKE.

He came to the desert of London town

Grey miles long ;
He wandered up and he wandered down,

Singing a quiet song.

He came to the desert of London town,

Mirk miles broad ;
He wandered up and he wandered down.

Ever alone with God.

There were thousands arid thousands of human kind

In this desert of brick and stone :
But some were deaf and some were blind,

And he was there alone.

At length the good hour came ; he died

As he had lived, alone :
He was not missed from the desert wide,

Perhaps he was found at the Throne.

1866.

( 253 )

SONG.

" The Nightingale was not yet heard,

For the Rose was not yet blown. *'^
His heart was quiet as a bird

Asleep in the night alone,
And never were its pulses stirred

To breathe or joy or moan :
The Nightingale was not yet heard

For the Rose was not yet blown.

Then She bloomed forth before his sight

In passion and in power.
And filled the very day with light,

So glorious was her dower ;
And made the whole vast moonlit night

As fragrant as a bower :
The young, the beautiful, the bright.

The splendid peerless Flower.

^ "Traveller in Persia" (Mr. Binning); cited by Mr. Fitzgerald
in the notes to his translation of Omar Khayyam.

254 Song.

Whereon his heart was like a bird

When Summer mounts his throne,
And all its pulses thrilled and stirred

To songs of joy and moan,
To every most impassioned word

And most impassioned tone ;
The Nightingale at length was heard

For the Rose at length was blown.

February^ 1877.

( 255 )

A CHANT.

While the trees grow,
While the streams flow,
While the winds blow,

We will be free !
Free as trees growing.
Free as streams flowing.
Free as winds blowing.

Evermore free 1

( 256 )

ON A BROKEN PIPE.

Neglected now it lies a cold clay form,
So late with living inspirations warm :
Type of all other creatures formed of clay —
What more than it for Epitaph have they ?

( 257 )

A PROEM.

" Carouse in the Past."

Robert Browning's Saul,

We will drink anew of old pleasures ;

In the golden chalice of song
We will pour out the wine-like treasures

Of memories hidden long.

Old memories, hidden but cherished,
In a heart-nook deep and calm ;

They have not faded and perished
Like the old friends they embalm.

We will call them forth from their darkness
As we call forth a rare old wine

Which the long rich years have mellowed
Till the flavour is divine.

In a glorious intoxication

Will we revel while such drink may last ;

And dead to the leaden-houred Present,

Live in golden hours of the Past
1854.

I'l

t 'i

I

i

NOTES.

It seems proper to give some account of the way in which
my editorial duties have been performed. All the poems
in the early part of the volume (pp. i to 75) were pro-
posed for publication by the author himself : so that, with
regard to them, I had no duty to perform except to print
them as they stood. It may be worth while, however,
to mention that " Richard Forest's Midsummer Night/'
as originally written, consisted of twelve sections, two of
which the author had marked for omission. One of
these sections, however, I have thought it best to retain.
The three pieces reprinted from the Dispatch seemed
to me worth giving if only as evidence of the versatility
of the author's powers.

With regard to the early poems which are given in the
latter part of the volume, I must own my entire responsi-
bility for their selection and arrangement. I have ex-
plained in the introductory memoir my views as to the
peculiar character and merits of *' The Doom of a City."
In a copy of this poem, which the author presented to
his friend Mr. John Grant, there is an explanatory note
appended to it, which seems worth quoting : —

" I call it a Fantasia, because (lacking the knowledge
and power to deal with the theme in its epical integrity)

26o Notes.

I have made it but an episode in a human life, instead
of a chapter in the history of Fate. Thus it is through-
out alloyed with the feelings and thoughts, the fantasies
of the supposed narrator; and the verse has all the
variableness and abrupt transitions of a man's moods,
instead of the solemn uniformity of the laws of Fate.

" The City of the Statues is from the tale of Zobeide in
the History of the Three Ladies of Bagdad and the Three
Calenders. This episode and the account of the King-
doms of the Sea in * Prince Beder and ,' impressed

my boyhood more powerfully than anything else in the
* Arabian Nights.'

"The 'Voyage' is certainly tiresome: but a penny
steamboat will not carry one to a City where the people
are all petrified, — not simply in soul and mind, but also
in flesh and blood and bone."

In explanation of the last paragraph it is necessary to
state that the poem originally consisted of four parts, the
first of which was entitled " The Voyage." This part I
have ventured to omit, for although there is some forcible
writing in it, it is certainly inferior in merit to the rest of
the poem. Moreover, the author once informed me that
it was his intention to alter and curtail this part, which,
however, he never found an opportunity of doing. It
may be stated that this first part relates how the narrator
of the story puts forth to sea in an open boat : how he
encounters a fearful storm, and afterwards a sea-monster,
from both of which he escapes. I have made the poem
commence with the last section of the first part ; but no
other alteration or omission has been made.

Notes. 261

TA^ Poet and his Muse^ p. 55.

To the original MS. of this poem the following note
was appended, " Not true now, but true of seven songless
years.*'

The Doom of a City, p. 92.

In the copy of this poem from which I have already
quoted an explanatory passage, a few notes occur written
in pencil. These seem to be worth preserving, and I
therefore give them below : —

** • The chemistry of terror thus intense

Bums them all lurid on the shrinking sense,' p. 109.

"De Quincey has a like simile in the * Opium-Eater' :—
* The fierce chemistry of his dreams burns daily objects intc
insufferable splendour.'

** * It is with swelling reverence dedicate,* p. ni,

" The dedication suggested by that of Bacon's « Advance-
ment of Learning.'

** ' I take thee, Misery, for my faithful Bride,' p. 113.
" See Shelley's * Misery, a Fragment.'

•• • Their Mon is fulfilled,' p. 125.

" This is, I conceive, the true meaning of JEon, as de-
veloped in one of De Quincey's papers, * On the Scriptural
Expression Eternity.'

** • The stars for ever sweep through space, surrounding,' p. 145.

"[This chorus was] written in 1 855 : adopted here because
something of the kind was wanted, and its existence hin-
dered me from writing a new Chorus specially for this

262 Notes.

piece. It does not fit in precisely, and is the only bit of
thus-adopted work."

A Festival of Lifey p. 169.
At the end of a copy of this poem which the author
presented to Mr. Grant, I find the following note : — " I
fear that you will find the above very turgid throughout
('The wreck of matter in the crash of words,' to improve
Addison's notorious line) ; but the conception was so
dithyrambic, and the stanza so long and elaborate, that I
have not been able to tone down the diction."

By the Sea^ p. 228.

The pieces given under this heading are extracted
from a long narrative poem, called " Ronald and Helen,"
the main portion of which is written in the same metre
as "Weddah and Om-el-Bonain." It is not one of
Mr. Thomson's best works ; but nevertheless it contains
many brilliant passages : and I shall be glad if the
present volume meets with sufficient success to justify
the publication of that and the rest of the uncollected
poems.

Prologue to the Pilgrimage to St Nicotine^ p. 233.

The poem of which this is the commencement was
written to accompany and explain a large coloured plate,
an imitation or rather burlesque of Stothard's " Canter-
bury Pilgrims." Each of the Pilgrims represented some
prominent personage of the day, and the verses summed
up, in a few pungent lines, his or her characteristics.
The whole piece is worth reprinting, but this could not
well be done without reprinting the plate also.

Notes, 263

Robert BumSy p. 250.
These lines are extracted from the article on Burns
which I have mentioned in the Memoir. The verses are
there stated to be part of " a queer ode dedicated to
him:" and after giving them the author adds: — "The
somewhat inebriate dithyrambist is perhaps right in
seizing as the essential characteristics of Burns his vigor-
ous strength and intense human or earthly sympathies."

William Blake, p. 252.
This poem forms the conclusion of Thomson's Essay
on Blake, which was published in the National Reformer.

fKINTKD BY DALLANTYNB, HANSON AND CO.
BDINBURGH AND LONDON.

Morfts \)^ James XTbomaon*

The City of Dreadful Night, and other Poems. 5^.

Vane's Story, and other Poems. 5^.

Essays and Phantasies. 6^.

OPINION'S OF THE PRESS,

"Those who received Mr. Thomson's * City of Dreadful Night'
as a singularly powerful manifestation of poetic imagination
will be naturally eager to learn how he deals with prose. When
we say we are not disappointed, we have given him high praise.
We do not mean that his command of prose is as great as his
mastery of metre, for it fails here and there ; but that he can write
such English as few can write nowadays is, we think, beyond dis-
pute. The opening essay, called *Our Lady of Sorrow,* is the
prose equivalent of * The City of Dreadful Night.' Indeed, one can
trace a marked correlation between Mr. Thomson's prose and poetic
work. In the essay, as in the poem, there is gloomy beauty, a pro-
found and pathetic despair, and a keen sympathy with humanity.
The language is majestic, sonorous, and musical, and in perfect
harmony with the vague sublimity of the thought. In the articles,
called *Open Secret Societies,' the * Sayings of Sigvat,* and *A
Walk Abroad,' the same qualities are displayed, but not to such an
impressive extent. * The Fair of St. Sylvester ' shows Mr. Thom-
son's power of expressing a joyous and graceful vein of feeling, just
as * Sunday up the River ' showed a poetic expression of this mood.
. . . As a literary work, and as manifesting a rare delicacy of hu-
mour, we are inclined to value the paper entitled * Indolence,' above
all but the first essay. ; In it Mr. Thomson shows that he has the
making of an essayist /«r et simple. And this is the more noticeable,
because a really fine essayist is the rarest of all literary phenomena,
even when essay-writing alone is attempted, and particularly re-
markable when met in conjunction with Mr. Thomson's pther gifts.
. . , Generally we may say that Essays and Phantasies is a book
which will delight all who care for fine English prose, high imagina-
tion and suggestive ingenuity." — Spectator.

"Mr. Thomson is already well known to most readers as the author
of a strange and brilliant volume of poems, 'The City of Dreadful

Night/ in which the melancholy pessimism of Leopardi is expressed
with the exquisite music of the * Castle of Indolence,' and in which,
at the same time, with a strange contradiction inherent in poetic
natures, the author has celebrated the country enjoyments of the
lower classes as they have seldom been done before. Indeed there
are those among Mr. Thomson's readers who think he did higher
thing^s in his wonderful * Sunday fit Hampstead/ and * Sunday up
the River,' than in all the defiant pessimism and despairing melan-
choly of * The City of Dreadful Night' That Mr. Thomson is not
so attractive in prose as in verse is hardly to be wondered at, for if
a man can write really good verse he is naturally more interesting
than the man who can write really good prose, because the one
accomplishment is rarer than the other, especially in this genera-
tion of little poets. As most of Mr. Thomson's poems were collec-
tions of earlier years, so most of these essays are collected from the
various papers to which they were contributed any time between
1864 and 1875." — Westminster Review^

** The appearance of a verse- writer of real power who belongs to
no school, and can hardly be called a debtor to any living poet, is
a thing to be welcomed with something more than the attention
commonly given to a new volume in metr^ , . . We are speaking of
Mr. Thomson as of a new poet ; the truth is, that most of the pieces
in this volume are dated from ten to fifteen years ago, some
farther back still, and some few have already been published.
But the scattered and casual publicity of magazines is not enough
for solid reputation. To many lovers of poetry Mr. Thomson's
work will doubtless be as new as, we confess, it is to ourselves.
. . . Mr. Thomson dedicates his book to the memory of Leopardi,
and he has certainly drunk deep of Leopardi's intense pessimism.
. • . Whether this bitterly despairing mood is really the one
most congenial to the poet, is a matter on which we have no
title to be curious, nor would the inquiry be relevant to the artistic
merit of his work. In any case, it is not the only mood he
is capable of. In * Sunday at Hampstead ' and * Sunday up the
River,' Mr. Thomson gives us two idyllic scenes full of brilliant
verse and fancy. From * Sunday up the River ' we quote some
lines on a sunrise of early summer ; which, be it observed, are not
mere ornamental description, but have, as all true poetic descrip-
tion should have, their definite function in expounding the poet's
mind. . . . There is a power in these lines which reminds one of
Shelley, though there is no question of imitation. But to set
them off as is their due the lighter verse that follows ought also
to be quoted. Indeed, frequent transitions of tone and metre are a
marked feature of the poem, which is not so much a single idyll as
a LUderkreis, * The Naked Goddess ' is a legend or allegory for

every reader to interpret as he will. To many it will seem strange,
to some foolish ; those who know Blake will breathe in it a familiar
air. Either Mr. Thomson has caught inspirations from Blake for
this poem (and caught them very well), or it is a singular coincidence
of poetical temper. Another piece to be specially mentioned, as
showing at its best Mr. Thomson's command of verse and dic-
tion, is *The Lord of the Castle of Indolence.' .... We have
shown as much of Mr, Thomson's poetic style as can fairly be
shown in the space of a review. It has the first and best mark
of genuine poetry, the directness and large simplicity which seem
to make discussion impossible. The words are not built or driven
together, but come in their places as if it were the most natural
thing for them to do, and they could not help it. This quality of
Mr. Thomson's work reminds us now and then of Wordsworth,
we mean in his happier vein, when he is naturally and truly
simple, not in the pieces where he affects a forced and bald
rusticity. Mr. Thomson includes in his volume some modestly
entitled 'Attempts at Translation from Heine.* They are very
good, but their interest is rather dimmed by the company in which
they appear. Plenty of people are always ready to translate Heine
more or less tolerably — and well enough, perhaps, for those who
cannot read the original. But such verse as that of * The Lord of
the Castle of Indolence ' is not to be had to order, or to be met
with every day. We hope that we may 'one day expect from Mr.
Thomson, not more finished work, for that we could hardly desire,
but something framed on a scale and with a continuity of design
which shall give his powers ampler scope." — Pall Mall Gazette.

** The author has high gifts. . , . These are mainly a direct-
ness, brilliance,, and vigour, such as we see in Ebenezer Elliott,
without his ill temper, and with a native melody, and a sense of
beauty, such as the Corn-Law Rhymer never showed." — Atkenaum,

"The present volume of verse is an unusually interesting one,
testifying, indeed, to a certain lack of range in the author's thought,
and to a concentration of his ideas upon certain riddles which the
wise indifference of the wise is apt to leave unattempted, but singu-
larly melodious in expression, dignified and full of meaning, and
bearing witness to reading as well as to meditation. . . . The
[leading] poem ends with two descriptively allegorical passages of
extreme beauty. The one is a vision of a sphinx and an angel, who
face each other, undergoing metamorphoses as the spectator gazes,
so that the angel, at first armed and winged, loses his wings, then
his sword, and then falls prostrate at the feet of the unchanging
sphinx. The other is a description of the Melencolia not unworthy
to be inscribed as a legend under the print itself. But it is exceed-

ingly rare to find a volume, in which so large a number of the pieces
contained have a distinct and individual poetic attractiveness. . . .
That he has what somebody once called a fine gloomy imagination is
not contestable, and, fortunately, he is not always given up to iL His
book, if it were ever possible to induce Englishmen to buy poetry
except as they buy wine — not because of it^ goodness, but because
of the name of the seller— ought to be widely read. . • . On the
whole, the interest and the attraction of the volume are of the most
considerable, though we cannot help wishing that Mr. Thomson
had read Shakespeare more, and Leopardi less." — Academy,

" When Mr. Thomson elects to write naturally, and dwell on the
glory and virtue of nature we are at one with him. Many parts of
* Sunday at Hampstead ' are excellent, so is * Sunday up the River,'
reprinted from Eraser ; and best of all is the allegorical fable of
the * Naked Goddess.' Perhaps the choicest morsel is * E. R B.*, a
graceful little dirge for our greatest woman poet, Mrs. Browning/' —
Graphic,

** * In the Room,' a dialogue between the articles of furniture in
a darkened and unopened room, leading at last to the disclosure that
the occupant is lying dead upon the bed, having died by his own
hand, has a fine gradual horror, which is masterly in its way ; while
the poems entitled * Sunday at Hampstead * and * Sunday up the
River,' strike us as being as fresh and original as anything we have
read for a considerable time. . . . Such songs as * Drink ! Drink !
open your Mouth,* and * As we Rush, as we Rush in the Train,' have
the best singing quality, and do no small credit to their author.*'-;—
Notes and Queries.

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an Extract from some Early Writings of Shelley,
by Prof. E. Dowden, 8vo, boards 2 6

Ala.stor ; or, The Spirit of Solitude, and other
Poems, by P. B. Shelley, a facsimile reprint of
the original edition, published in 1816, 12mo 6

Hellas, a Lyrical Drama, by P. B. Shelley. London,
1822. A facsimile reprint, on hand-made paper,
together with Shelley's Prologue to Hellas, and
Notes bjr Dr. Gamett and Manr W. Shelley,
edited, with an introduction, by T. J. Wise 8

Cheap edition, for the performance of the

Drama, may be had, paper 2s 3d ; with portrait,
ls5d

The Wandering Jew, a Poem, by P. B. Shelley,

edited by B. Dobell, 8vo, 500 printed 8

The Mask of Anarchy, written on the Occasion
of the Massacre at Manchester, by Percy Bysshe
Shelley. Facsimile of the Holograph Manuscript,
with Introduction by H. B. Forman, 4to, boards 10

A Proposal for Putting Keform to the Vote
throughout the Kingdom, by the Hermit of Mar-
low (Percy Bysshe Shelley). Facsimile of the
Holograph Manuscript, witn an IntroducHon by
H. B. Forman, 4to, boards 10

Epipsychidion, by P. B. Shelley, a Type Fac-
simile Keprint of the Ori^al Edition, first pub-
lished in 1821, with introduction by Kev.
Stopford Brooke, and a Note by A. C. Swinburne,
edited by R. A. Potts 10

Solomon (G. ) Jesus of History and Jesus of

Tradition Identified, demy 8vo, cloth 7 6

How to Speak Extempore, by an Old Platform
Orator : 1. Thinking— 2. Speaking— 3. Speaking
What is Thought, 12mo, 43 pp. , cloth 1

ii)6, STRAND, LONDON, W,a 13

The ** Idyll of the White Lotus," by M. C,

Fellow of the TheosophiccU Society, sm. 8vo,
ornamental cloth gilt 3 6

Man ; Fragments of Forgotten History, by Two
Chelas in the Theosophical Society, Second Edi-
tion, post Svo, cloth 4

Five Years of Theosoi)hy; being Mystical,
Philosophical, Theosophical, Historical, and
Scientihc Essays, selected from the * * Theosophist, "
tiiick post Svo, 575 pp. 7 6

WLoxk^ of t))e late Sameis

Just Keady. Second Edition.
The City of Dreadfm Ni^rht, and other Poems,

cr. Svo, cloth 5

Vane's Story, Weddah, and Om-el-Bonain

and other Poems, cr. Svo, cloth 5

Ditto, large paper 10

Essays and Phantasies, cr. Svo, cloth 6

Ck>NTSi7T8 : — A Lady of Sorrow — Proposals for the Speedy Extino-
tion of Eril and Misery — Bumble, Bumbledom, BambleiMU— Open
Secret Sooietiee — An Evening with Spenser— A Note on Forster's
life of Swift— A Note of Qeorge Meredith, &c., Ac.

A Voice from the Nile, and other Poems, with

a Memoir, etched portrait, cr. Svo, cloth 6

Ditto, large paper, Svo, cloth 12

" Generally we may say that ' Essays and Phantasies ' is a book
which will delight all who care for fine English proee, high imagina-
tion, and soggeBtive ingenuity. "—/d^etcUor.

" A strange and brilliant volume of poems, the ' City of Dreadful
Night,' in which the melancholy pessimism of ' Leopardi ' is ex«
mened with the exquisite music of the ' Castle of Indolence.' "—
wettmiflMter Review,

14 REEVES &' TURNER,

Anderson (J. Corbet) A Short Chronicle con-
cerning the Parish of Croydon in the
Country of Surrey, cutSy sm. 8vo, half roan 1882 6

Whatman paper. 200 printed.

Akerman (J. Y.) Wiltshire Tales, 12mo, 1853 2 3
Anglo-Saxon.— Analecta Anglo-Saxonica :
A Selection in Prose and Verse from the Anglo-
Saxon Authors of various ages, with a Glossary,
designed chiefly as a first book for students, by
Benj. Thorpe, a new edition, with corrections and
improvements, post 8vo, cloth (pub 7s 6d) 1868 4 6
Vemons (E.) Guide to the Anglo-
Saxon Tongue, on the Basis of Professor
Bask's Grammar, to which are added Beading
Lessons in Verse and Prose, with Notes for the
use of Learners, 12mo, cloth (pub 5s) 1878 3
Barnes (Be v. W.) An Anglo Saxon

Delectus, serving as a First Class Book of the
Language, 2nd edition, 12mo, cl. (pub 2s 6d) 1866 1 6
See also ** Anglo-Saxon " in Publications.

Arnold (Thomas) History of the Common-
wealth, 2 vols, 8vo, cloth 1882 8 6

Bewick Memento. — Catalogue, with Purchasers'
Names and Prices Bealised, of the Scarce and
Curious Collection of Books, Silver Plate, Prints,
Pictures, etc. , and Bewick Belies, sold by auction
at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, on Feb. 5, 6, and 7, and
August 26th 1884, 4to, cloth 2 6

Banks (Sir T. C.) Baronia Anghca Concen-
trata, or a Concentrated Account of all the
Baronies commonly called Baronies in Fee de-
riving their Origin from Writ of Summons, and
not from any specific limited creation, showing
the descent and line of heirship as well of those
families mentioned by Sir Wm. Dugdale, as of
those whom that celebrated author has omitted
to notice (interspersed with interesting notes and
remarks), to which is added the Proofs of Par-
liamentary Sitting from Edward I. to Queen
Anne, also a Glossary of Dormant, English,
Scotch, and Irish Peerage Titles, 2 vols, 4to,
cloth (pub £3 3s) 1845 10 6

196, STRAND, LONDON, W,C. 15

ViZtmx(t^ZX%—co7iti7iued,

Barnes (W.) Early En^lajid and the Saxon-

Elnfirland.) with some Notes on the Father-Stock
of tKe Saxon England, the Fusians, post 8vo,
178 pp. (pub 3s) 1869 2

Bauer (Caroline) MemoirS) translated from the

Grerman, 4 vols, Svo, cloth (pub £2 16s) 12

Bum (J. S. ) The History of the Parish Re-
gisters in Eng'laJid, also of the Kegisters of
Scotland, Ireland, the East and West Indies, the
Dissenters, and the Episcopal Chapels in and
about London, with Ooservations on Bishops,
Transcripts, and the Provisions of the Act of the
52nd George III., Cap. 146, Second Edition, Svo,
cloth, 296 pp. (pub 10s 6d) 1862 7

Bent (J. T.) Genoa: How the Republic Rose

and Fell, 18 illustrations ^ 8vo, cloth, 420 pp.
(pubISs) 1881 3 6

Burnet (Gilbert, Bishop of Salisbury) History of
the Reformation of the Church of England,
with numerous Illustrative Notes, and a copious
Index, 2 vols, roy. 8vo, cloth (pub £1 16s) 1880 9

Gapello (H.) and R Ivens, from Ben^ella
to the Territory of Yacca, Description of a
Journey into Central and West Africa, compris-
ing Narratives, Adventui-es, and Important Sur-
veys of the Sources of the Rivers Cunesa,
Cubango, Luando, Cuanza, and Cuango, and of
the great ^art of the Course of the two latter,
together with the Discovery of the Rivers Hamba,
Cauall, Sussa, and Cugho, and a Detailed Ac-
count of the Territories of Quiteca, N'Bungo,
Sosso, Futa, and Yacca, by H. Capello and R.
Ivens' Expedition, orp^anized in the Years 1877 —
80, translated by aB. Elwes, vrith maps and
nwmerotis illttstrations, 2 vols, cloth extra (pub
£2 2s) S. LoWy 1882 10

Cecil (Gen. Sir Edw.) Life and Times of, Vis.
Wimbledon, Colonel of an English Regiment in
the Dutch Service, 1605^1631, and one of His
Majesty's most Honourable Privy Council, by C.
Dalton, port, 2 vols, 8vo, cloth (pub 30s) 1885 5

i6 REEVES 6- TURNER,

Vi tmair(titX»— continued,

Oeylon : A General Description of the
Island, Historical, Physical, and Statistical,
containing the most recent information, toith
map, 2 vols, 8vo, cloth (pub 288) 1876 8

Ohatto (W. A.) Facts and Speculations on
the Origin and History of Playinff
Cards, many plates {some coloured), and wood-
cuts in the text of ancient playing cards, 8vo (pub
21s) J. B. SmUh, 1848 7

Chichester— Transactions of the ArohsBo-
lo^cal Institute, held at Chichester in 1853,
8vo, cloth, plates 3

This Tolame is devoted principally to the County of Sussex and
the ChuTohes in it.

Cobbold (T. S.),Entozoa, being a Supplement to
the Introduction to the Study of Helminthology,
roy. 8vo, cloth (pub 10s 6d) 1869 3

Cosin (Jas.) Names of the Roman Catholics,
Nonjurors and others who refused to take the
oath to KingGeorge I., together with their Titles,
Additions, Places of Abode, the Parishes and
Townships where their Lands Lay, the Names of
the then Tenants and the Annual Value of them
returned by themselves, reprinted from the edition
of 1745, 8vo, cloth (pub 5s) 1862 2

Cruikshank (George) Scraps and Sketches,
24 etched plates {beautifully reproduced), con-
taining humorous sketches on ea^h plate, ob. folio,
hand-coloured, new hf. mor. 1828 (reprinted 1882) 36

Cruikshank (George) Scraps and Sketches,
24 etched plates {beautifully reproduced), con-
taining humorou>s sketches on each plate, oblong
folio, in cloth gilt 1828 (reprinted 1882) 4 6

Cruikshank (George) My Sketch Book,
37 etched plates {beautifully reproduced), contain'
ing several very humorous sketches on each plate,
oUong folio, in cloth gilt 1834 (reprinted 1882) 4 6

Cruikshank (G.) The Life of, in two Epochs, by
Blanchard Jerrold, numerous illustrations, with
list of works illustrated by G. C, 2 vols, post 8vo,
(pub 24s) Cfhatto & Windus, 1882 7 6

196, STRAND, LONDON, W.C. 17

Ufmainbnjs; —continued,

CyclopsBdia (The) Of Practical Quotations,
English and Latin, with an Appendix, containing
Proverbs from the Latin and ^lodern Foreign
Languages, with more titan 200 pages of Index
matter, by J. K. Hoyt and Anna Ward, 4to,
edition, thick roy. 8vo (pub 15s) 1882 10 6

Siu also undet Dictionaries, page 18.

33 oofeg on JBtalec tg«

Ck>mwall. —Specimens of Cornish Provincial Dialect,
Collected and Arranged by Uncle Jan Treenoodle,
with some Introductory Remarks and a Glossary
by an Antiquarian Friend, also a Selection of
Songs and other Pieces connected with Cornwall,
post 8vo, with a curiotts portrait of Dolly Pen-
treath, cloth (pub 4s) 1860 2 6

Craig (J. D.) Handbook to the Modem Pro-
vencal IjSiiguSbge spoken in the South of
France, Piedmont, etc., sm. post 8vo, cloth,
106 pp. (pub 3s 6d) 1863 2

Durham.— A Glossary of Words used in Teesdale
in the County of Durham, by F. T. Dinsdale,
poet 8vo, cloth (pub 6s) 1849 3 6

Ireland. — A Glossary with some Pieces of Verse of
the Old Dialect of the English Colony in the
Baronies of Forth and Bargy Co., Wexford, Ire-
land, formerly collected by Jacob Poole of
Growton, now edited with Notes and Introduc-
tion by the Rev. W. Barnes, author of ** The
Dorset Poems and Glossary,*' fcap. 8vo, cloth
(pub4s6d) 1867 3 6

Somersetshire. — On the Dialect of Somersetshire,
with a Glossary, Poems, etc, exemplifying the
Dialect, by J. Jennings, Second Edition by the
the Rev. J. K. Jennings, fcap. 8vo, cloth (pub
3s 6d) 1857 2 6

Westmoreland Dialect (The) in Four Familiar
Dialo^es, by Mrs. Ann Wheeler, a New Edition,
to wMch is added a Copious Glossary of West-
moreland and Cumberland Words, post 8vo,
doth (pub 38 6d) 1840 2

1 8 REEVES &» TURNER,

^rC^WCC^ZX%— continued,

Dickens (Chas.) Sunday under Three Heads,
a reproduction in exact facsimile of the rare origi-
nal, 12nio, wrapper (pub 2s) 1884 1

Dickens Memento. — Catalogue, with Purchaser's
Names and Prices Realised of the Pictures,
Drawings, and Objects of Art, of the late Charles
Dickens, sold by Messrs. Christie, on July 9, 1870,
with an Introduction by Francis Phillimore, and
** Hints to Dickens Collectors," by J. F. Dexter,
4to, cloth 2 6

Dictionary (A) of Poetical Illustrations,
specially selected with a view to the Needs of
the Pulpit and Platform, by the Rev. R. A. Ber-
tram, with Indexes y thick roy. 8vo (pub 12s 6d)

1883 9 6

See also under " Cyclopsadia."

Dictionary of Illustrations adapted to Chris-
tian Teaching, embracing Mythology, Analogic
Legends, Emblems, Parables, Anecdotes, etc.,
with elaborate Textual and Topical IndexeSt 8th
edition, thick roy. 8vo (pub 12s 6d) 1883 9 6

See also " Homiletic Encyclopedia."

Dictionary of Philosophy (A) In the Words of
Philosophers, edited wSh an Introduction, by J.
Radford Thomson, roy. 8vo, cloth (pub 12s 6d) 9 6

Edmonds (Richard) Cornwall, the Land's

End District, its Antiquities, Natural Pheno-
mena and Scenery, also a Brief Memoir of Richard
Trevithick, by R. Edmonds, map, 6 plates and
woodcuts 8vo, cloth (pub 7s 6d) 1862 4 6

Erskine (Thomas, Lord) Speeches, with a
Memoir of his Life by Edward Walford, demy
8vo, cloth (pub 8b; 4

196, STRAND, LONDON, W,C. 19

iS vm\xCtStX%'--conUnued.

lEpton's (Uleb*) aSBorfes on BoincjUiaji 28oofe*

Domesday Studies, an Analysis and Digest of
the Staffordshire Survey, etc., cr. 4to (pub £1 Is)

Triihner,\%%\ 10 6

An Analysis and Digest of the Somerset

Survey (according to the Oxon Codex), and of
the Gheld Inquest of A.D. 1084, as collated with
and illustrated by, Domesday, 2 vols, crown 4to
(pub £2 12s 6d) 1880 21 6

Key to Domesday, showing the Method and
Exactit'ide of its Mensuration, and the Precise
Meaning of its more usual Formulae, the subject
being exemplified by an Analysis and Digest of
the Dorset Survey, cr. 4to (pub 30s)

Taylors Co., 1878 10 6

The Court. Household, and Itinerary of
T^ing Henry II., instancing also the Chief
Agents and Adversaries of the King in his
Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy, cr. 4to (pub
24s) Taylor A: Co., 1878 10 6

See also under " Eyton " in Publications.

Forsyth (W.) Hortensius : an Historical Essay
on the Office and Duties of an Advocate, 10 wood-
cut illvstrations, 8vo (pub 7s 6d) J. Murray ^ 1879 4

Foster's (Joseph) The Royal Lineage of our
Noble and Gentle Families, together with
their Paternal Ancestors, Third Series, contains
Chart Pedigrees of about 90 Families, 2 vols, 4to,
blue cloth Privately printed, 1884 12 6

Qeige (John) The History and Antiquities of

Suffolk, Thingoe Hundred, unth maps, plans,
views of churches, tombs, portraits, <£rc., ic, 538
pp., large 4to, cloth, paper label (pub £4 14s 6d)

1838 20
Thingoe Hundred, comprising Barrow, Brockley, Chevington,
Flempton Fomham, Hargrave, Mariston, Nowton, Rede, Baxham,
Weatley, Whepeted, dtc., &c.

to REE VES &* 7 URNER,

MtmairOitt^— continued,

Greg (Percy) Across the Zodicu) : the Story of a

Wreckeia Record, Deciphered, translated and

edited by Percy Greg, 2 vols, post 8vo (pub 21s)

Triibner4i!Co,,l880 4 6
Shipwreck— Outward Boand — The Untravelled Deep— A New
World, Language, Laws, and Life — An Official Visit — Escort Duty —
A Fault and its Founders — Manners and Castoms — Women and
Wedlock— A Country Drive- On the River— The Children of Ligb*
—By Sea, etc., etc.

Qrazebrook (H. S.) Heraldry of "Worcester-
shire, being a Roll of the Arms borne by the
several Noble, Knightly, and Gentle Families
which have had Property or Residence in that
County from the Earliest Period to the Present
Time, with Genealogical Notes, 2 vols, sul 4to
(pub 42s) A. M. Smithy 1873 12

See also " Boutell" Publication.

Grotius, De Jure Belli et Pacis, accompanied
by an Abridged Translation by W. Whewell,
D.D., 3 vols, Svo (pub 36s 6d) Cambridge 14

On the Rights of War and Peace, an

Abridged Translation by W. W' hewell, Svo (pub

17s) 1853 4 6

Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Pro-
vincial W^ords, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs,
and Ancient Customs, from thoroughly, from the
Reign of Edward I., 2 vols, Svo, over 1,000 pages
closely printed in double columns, cloth 1878 10 6

Hazlitt (Wm.) Essays on the Pine Arts, a New
Edition, edited by W. C. Hazlitt, post 8vo (pub
6s 6d) 1873 2 9

Hazhtt (W. C.) English Proverbs and Proverbial
Phrases, collected from the most Authentic
Sources, Alphabetically Arranged, Second Edition,
greatly enlarged and carefully revised, post 8vo,
cloth (pub 78 6d) ^ 3 6

Homiletic Encyclopsedia, or Illustrations in
Theology and Morals, a Handbook of Practical
Divinity, and a Commentary on Holy Scripture,
selected by R. A. Bertram, Sixth Edition, thick
8vo (pub 12s 6d) 1883 9 6

for others of this aeries, see pages 16 and 18.

196, STRAND, LONDON, IV. C 21

WitVXUirititt^—confmued.

Hooker (J. D. ) Journal of a Tour in Marocco,
and the Great Atlas, by Joseph D. Hooker
and J. Ball, with an Appendix, including a Sketch
of the Geology of Marocco, by George Maw, map
and numeroiis illustrations^ 8vo (puo 2l8)

Macmillany 1878 6 6

Hosa.ck (John) On the Rise and Growth of
the Laws of Nations, as established by
General Usage and Treaties, 8vo, cloth (pub 12s)

1882 2 6

Lajidseer (Sir Edwin) Studies, illustrated by 40
plates, with 2 woodcut sketches on each, and 1 16
woddcuts in the text, Sketches from the Collection
of Her Majesty the Queen and other sources
with a History of his Art-Life, by W. C. Monk-
house, roy. 4to, ornamental cloth, gilt leaves (pub
£2 2s) 12 6

Lower (M. A. ) Contributions to Literature,

Historical, Antiquarian, and Metrical, post 8vo,

284 pp., cloth (pub 7s 6d) 1854 3 3

— English Surnames, an Essay on Family

Nomenclature, Historical, Etymological, and
Humorous, with several illustrative appendices,
Fourth Edition, enlarged, 2 vols, post 8vo, cloth,
(pub 128) 1875 7 6

Lytton (Edwd. , Lord) Speeches, now first col-
lected, with some of his Political Writings,
hitherto unpublished, and a Memoir by his Son, 2
vols, 8vo (pub 24s) Blackwood, 1874 5

Makins (G. A., late one of the Assayers to the Bank
of England) Manual of Metallurgy, 1(X)
enaravings, Second Edition, re- written and much
enlarged, square 8vo, cloth (pub 16s)

Mlis <L' White, 1873 4 6

About half the' work is devoted to the nobler metals.

22 REEVES <5r* TURNER,

?SiZXmxCtsn%— continued,

Morelli (G.) Italian Ma.sters in German
Q-alleries, a Critical Essay on the Italian Pic-
tures in the Galleries of Munich, Dresden, Berlin,
translated from the German by Mrs. L. Richter,
illustrated, post 8vo, cloth (pub 8s 6d) 1883 2 9

Nares (Archdeacon) Glossary, or Collection of
Words,* Phrases, Customs, Proverbs, &c., par-
ticularly Shakespere and his Contemporaries, a
New Edition, with Considerable Additions, both
of Words and Examples, by James O. HaUiwell
and Thos. Wright, M.A., 2 thick vols, 8vo, cloth,
(pub 21s) 11

Nicholas (T.) The Pedigree of the English
People, an Ar^ment, Historical and Scientific,
on the Formation and Growth of the Nation,
tracing Race-Admixture in Britain from the
earliest times, with special reference to the incor-
poration of the Celtic Aborigines, ma'p, 8vo, cloth
(pub 16s) 1878 4 6

Owen (John) Bveningg with the Skeptics,
or Free Discussion on Free Thinkers, 2 vols, 8vo,
cloth (pub 32s) 1881 7 6

Opie and his Works ; being a Catalogue of 760
Pictures, by J. Opie, R.A., preceded by a Bio-
graphical Sketch by J. J. Rogers, 8vo, 237 pp. 1878 3 6

Persia, Eastern. — An Account of the Journeys of
the Persian Boundary Commission, 1870-71-72 ;
the Geography, with NaiTatives, by Majors St.
John, Lovett, and E. Smith, and an Introduction
by Major- General Sir F. J. Goldsmid; the
Zoology and Geology by W. T. Blandford, mapt^
28 plates of beasts , birds , etc., some of them
beautifully coloured by handy 2 vols, 8vo (pub
£2 2s) MacmUlan d- Co., 1876 14

Prickett (Fred.) The History and Antiquities
of Hi^h^ate, t(nth maps and illustrations, 8vo,
cloth 1^2 4

196, STRAND, LONDON, W.C 23

WCtmaitdtt^—conftnued,

Bandolph (Thos.), Poetical and Dramatic
Works, now First Collected, and edited with
Notes, etc., by W. C. Hazlitt, portrait and
plates, post 8vo, half cloth, paper label (pub 12s)

1875 5 6

Rowlandson. — Caricature Etchings Illus-
trating Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides

made with Dr. Johnson, in portfolio, with strings 8

The above consists of twenty plates, complete, with title and list
of contents.

Ditto, the same, on large paper, without port-

folio, and without list of contents 8

Sand (George) Letters, translated and edited by
Raphael Ledos de Beaufort, and Biographical
Preface, % portraits 3 vols, 8vo, cloth (pub 31s 6d)

1886 12 •

Sandy (W.) and S. A. Forster. History of

the Violin and other Instruments played on
with a Bow, from the Earliest Times to the
Present, also an Account of the Principal Makers,
English and Foreign, many engravings, 8vo, cloth
(pub 14s) 1864 6 6

Shakespeare— D. Bacon's Philosophy of
the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded,
with a Preface by N. Hawthorne, 8vo (pub 18s)

Groomhridge d- Soiis, 1857 4

Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers, an
Exposition of their Similarities of Thought and
Expression, preceded by a View of Emblem
Literature down to A.D. 1616, by H. Green, 17
plates and many woodcuts in the text of the
devices from the original authors, roy. 8vo, orna-
mental gilt cloth, gilt top (pub £1 lis 6d)

Triibner d- Co., 1870 8 6

Shakespeare's Library— A Collection of Plays
and Komances, Novels, Poems, and Histories em-
ployed by Shakespeare in the composition of
nis Works, with Introduction and Notes, care-
fully revised and greatly enlarged by W. C.
Hazlitt, 6 vols, 12mo, half cloth, paper label (pub
£2 2s) 1875 20 Q

24 REEVES <5r* TURNER,

lSiZtmxCtSZt%— continued,

Simmonds (P. L.) AniTna.1 Food Resources
of Different Nations, with mention of some
of the Special Dainties of various People, derived
from the Animal Kingdom. 461 pp. (pub 9s) 3 3

South (Dr. Robert) Sermons Preached on Several
Occasions, with the Chief Heads of the Sermons,
Memoir and Index, 2 vols, royal 8vo, double
columns (pub £1 4s) 1877 7

Southey's (Robert) Common - Place Book,
edited by J. W. Warter, 4 vols, Svo (pub 78s)

Longmans^ 1876 15
Ditto, half calf, marb. edges 26

Contains Choice Passages — Collections for English Manners and
Literature — Special Collections — Analytical Readings — Original
Memoranda, &c.

Sport.— The Year's Sport, a Review of British
Sport and Pastimes for the year 1885, edited by
A. E. Watson, 8vo, half roan (pub 21s) 4 6

Theophilus— An Essay upon Various Arts,
in Three Books, by Theophilus, called also Rugerus,
Priest and Monk, forming an Encyclopaedia of
Christian Art of the Eleventh Century, translated
by R. Hendrie, 8vo, cloth 1847 5 6

Transactions of the Loggerville Literary
Society, 8vo, illttstrated, gilt edges

Privately printed, 1867 3 6

Contents.— History of England — Account of Ancient Implements
— Review of Juvenile Literature — Neglected Characters of Shakes-
peare — A Tour in Cornwall— Cornish Giants, etc.

Vaughan (C. J., D,D.) The, Family Prayer
and Sermon Book, designed for General
Use, and especially adapted for those prevented
from attending Public Worship, vol 1, January
to June, vol 2, July to December, 2 vols, cloth
(pub 308) 188- 11

In white cloth, with designs worked in gold

and silver on the sides and back, and fitted in a

box with elegant designs, square 8vo (pub £2 2s) 15

Suitable for a present.

Wood (W. S.) An Eastern Afterglow, or Pre-
sent Aspect of Sacred Scenery, illustrated, 8vo,
cloth, (pub 16s) 1880 3 Q

196, STRAND, LONDON, JV.C. 25

Wilkins (Peter) The Life and Adventures
of, by Robert Paltock, of Clement's Inn, with
Preface by A. H. Bullen, an exact reprint of the
original f with facsimile illtcstrations, 2 vols, bds. ,
paper label (pub 10s 6d) 5

Bat little is known of the author, though his romantic de-
aoriptions of the " Flying Indians " have been popular for some

Smerations. It is somethliig in the style of Robinson Crusoe and
olliyer's Travels.

Wren (Sir Christopher) His Family and his
Times, with Original Letters and a Discourse
on Architecture, hitherto unpublished, 1585—1723,
by L. Phillimore, frontispiece, 8vo, cloth 1883 3

Wright ^Thos.) Saint Patrick's Pm^atory,
an Essay on the Legends of Hell, Purgatory, and
Paradise, current (mring the Middle Ages, post
8vo, cloth (pub 6s) 1844 3

Young (R.) A Commentary on the Holy
Bible, as Literary and Idiomatically Translated
out of the Original Languages, 798 pp. post 8vo,
doth 2 6

26 REE VES &> TURNER

REEVES & TURNER have bought of
Mr. J. RUSSELL SMITH the Entire Stock of
his ''LIBRARY of OLD AUTHORS/' which
they offer at the undermentioned prices.

The Dramatic and Poetical Works of John
Marston, now first collected and edited by J.
O. Halliwell, F.R.S., etc., 3 vols (pub 15s) 1856 9 6

The Table Talk of John Selden, with a Bio-
graphical Preface and Notes by S. W. Singer,
Sra Edition, port, (pub 5s) 1860 3

The Vision and Creed of Piers Ploughman,

edited by Thomas Wright ; a new edition, revised,
with Additions to the Notes and Glossary, 2 vols,
(pub 10s) 7

Hyms and Songs of the Church, by George
Wither, edited, with Introduction, by Edward
Farr ; also the Musical Notes, composed by Or-
lando Gibbons, with port, after Hole (pub 5s) 1856 3

Hallelujah ; or, Britain's Second Remem-
brancer, in Praiseful and Penitential Hymns,
Spiritual Songs, and Moral Odes, by Geo. W ither,
with Introduction by Edward Farr, port, (pub 6s)

1857 3 6

Homer's Batrachomyomachia, Hymns and

Epigrams. Hesiod's Works and Days, Musoeus'
Hero and Leander, Juvenal's Fifth Satire, trans-
lated by George Chapman, Avith Introduction and
Notes by Kev. Kichard Hooper (pub 6s) 4

See page 28 for Homer's Iliad.

196, STRAND, LONDON, W.C. 27

The Odysseys of Homer, translated according
to the Greek by George Chapman, with Intro-
duction and Notes by the Rev. Richard Hooper,
2 vols, fcap. 8vo, withfacsimile of the rare origiiial
front, (pub 12s) 1857 7 6

The Dramatic Works of John Webster,
Edited, with Notes, etc., by William Hazlitt, 4
vols (pub 20s) 1857 12

This ia the most complete edition, coutainlng two more plays than
in Dyce's edition.

The whole of the Works of Roger Ascham,
now first collected and revised, with Life of the
Author, by the Rev. Dr. Giles, 4 vols (pub 20s) 1866 12

Poetical Works of Robt. Southwell, Canon
of Loretto, now first completely edited by W.
B. Tumbull (pub 4s) 1856 2 6

The Dramatic Works of John Lily (The
Suphnist)} now first collected, with Life and
Notes by F. W. Fairholt, 2 vols (pub 10s) ^ 6 6

Diaries of Thomas Hearne, the Antiquary

edited by Dr. Bliss, 3 vols, poi't. (pub 15s) 9

The Poetical Works of Richard Crawshaw,
Author of * * Steps to the Temple," * * Sacred Poems,
with other Delights of the Muses," and **Poe-
mata," now first collected, edited by W. B. Tura-
buU(pub5s) 3

Dr. Cotton Mather's Wonders of the In-
visible World, being an Account of the Trials
of several Witches lately executed in New Eng-
land, with Dr. Increase Mather's Further Account
of the Tryals, and Cases of Conscience concemin«f
Witchcrafts, 1693, with an Introductory Preface,
portrait {puh 5b) 1862 3

Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of
Enfflandi collected and edited by W. Carew
Hamtt, 4 vols, vnth many curious woodcut foe-
simOes (pub aOs) 1864—6 12